Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have occurred around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest development and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia, so as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a small number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who want to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the contents of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a fairly unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in that it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union with Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing parts of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90% of Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by Ivar Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern Nynorsk differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is to Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German and Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the subdomain no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article count started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia. Many felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and claimed that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper case in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy to adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to include new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2% for Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current language policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either "Norsk (bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the subdomain should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct representation of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested is a server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb" today is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål) are ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an unofficial initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list at [[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a third Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of the two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the existing wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias (including Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of featured articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community, so as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this list in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and no:) Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]]
Bjarte,
If these people really did receive positive reactions, which I'm doubtful they did, it's because most of the people in charge don't like having two Wikipedias where there "could" be 1 instead. It is seen as a tragic division of effort, and no doubt those who were discussing it with them played down dramatically the actual differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk.
I also have an opinion regarding no: and nb:.
no: should be moved to nb:, and no: should redirect to nb:.
However, this should eventually be changed so that no: is a portal containing a link to both, but there should be enough time in between for people to get sort of used to the new URL, as there was with "wikipedia.org" vs "en.wikipedia.org" for the English Wikipedia. As with the English Wikipedia, however, actual article requests to no: such as http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norge should automatically be redirected to the Bokmål article, with perhaps special exceptions when the title is obviously Nynorsk.
To continue forever to use no: for Bokmål and/or Riksmål is inherently non-neutral. no: is listed in the ISO standard as "Norwegian", yet if Nynorsk is disallowed on no: but no: remains at the current subdomain, that means we are actually endorsing the view that "Bokmål is the _real_ Norwegian language".
Mark
On 25/04/05, Bjarte Sørensen bjarte.sorensen@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have occurred around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest development and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia, so as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a small number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who want to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the contents of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a fairly unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in that it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union with Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing parts of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90% of Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by Ivar Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern Nynorsk differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is to Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German and Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the subdomain no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article count started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia. Many felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and claimed that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper case in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy to adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to include new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2% for Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current language policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either "Norsk (bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the subdomain should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct representation of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested is a server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb" today is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål) are ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an unofficial initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list at [[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a third Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of the two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the existing wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias (including Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of featured articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community, so as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this list in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and no:) Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-----Opprinnelig melding----- Fra: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l- bounces@Wikimedia.org] På vegne av Mark Williamson Sendt: 26. april 2005 02:33 Til: bjarte@pingpingping.com; wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Emne: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Language policy agreement in the NorwegianWikipedia community
Bjarte,
If these people really did receive positive reactions, which I'm doubtful they did, it's because most of the people in charge don't like having two Wikipedias where there "could" be 1 instead. It is seen as a tragic division of effort, and no doubt those who were discussing it with them played down dramatically the actual differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk.
Seems like a good analysis; I would add that it seems likely, from what they've written on no:, that they have misrepresented the actual situation. They seem to labour under the misconception that having a mixed Wikipedia means having one Norwegian Wikipedia, whereas it means having three, thus creating a further division of effort.
Their hopes of merging Nynorsk and Bokmål are quite misplaced, and it seems to be obvious to most users that the losing part in such a merger would be the Nynorsk users; their Wikipedia is the first modern encyclopedia in Nynorsk, and thus a great step forward for the Nynorsk community.
I also have an opinion regarding no: and nb:.
no: should be moved to nb:, and no: should redirect to nb:.
However, this should eventually be changed so that no: is a portal containing a link to both, but there should be enough time in between for people to get sort of used to the new URL, as there was with "wikipedia.org" vs "en.wikipedia.org" for the English Wikipedia. As with the English Wikipedia, however, actual article requests to no: such as http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norge should automatically be redirected to the Bokmål article, with perhaps special exceptions when the title is obviously Nynorsk.
To continue forever to use no: for Bokmål and/or Riksmål is inherently non-neutral. no: is listed in the ISO standard as "Norwegian", yet if Nynorsk is disallowed on no: but no: remains at the current subdomain, that means we are actually endorsing the view that "Bokmål is the _real_ Norwegian language".
I agree, in principle, but I do hope that we can take his slowly. Both Wikipedias (with the exception of one user) seem to agree that we should figure out the best way to create a portal before moving. As long as we have an open dialogue and continue to move towards a portal solution (perhaps including also the Swedish and Danish Wikipedias in a Scandinavian portal), I think that all of us would be better served with a slightly problematic domain name than with a frustrating half-baked portal.
The move from no: to nb: with no: as a redirect to nb: could of course be made straight away, but I fear that this would all to easily become a permanent solution, and doesn't really fix the problem; no: would still equal Bokmål/Riksmål.
Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]]
Chris Nyborg wrote:
I agree, in principle, but I do hope that we can take his slowly.
I agree completely with this part... about taking things slowly. :-)
I would say that the analysis given here was excellent and it made me really happy to read all about it: this is how Wikipedia works when it is working best: people who don't agree on everything taking the time to discuss it at great length and try to find a way to accomodate everyone, and get a sense of the wisest way forward.
Based on this, I don't support the creation of a 3rd wikipedia unless and until the users who want it are able to build a consensus within the community that it is a sensible thing to do.
--Jimbo
I'm still curious re: Riksmal and Hognorsk.
Mark
On 30/04/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Chris Nyborg wrote:
I agree, in principle, but I do hope that we can take his slowly.
I agree completely with this part... about taking things slowly. :-)
I would say that the analysis given here was excellent and it made me really happy to read all about it: this is how Wikipedia works when it is working best: people who don't agree on everything taking the time to discuss it at great length and try to find a way to accomodate everyone, and get a sense of the wisest way forward.
Based on this, I don't support the creation of a 3rd wikipedia unless and until the users who want it are able to build a consensus within the community that it is a sensible thing to do.
--Jimbo
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-----Opprinnelig melding----- Fra: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org]På vegne av Mark Williamson Sendt: 1. mai 2005 05:07 Til: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Emne: Re: SV: [Wikipedia-l] Language policy agreement in theNorwegianWikipedia community
I'm still curious re: Riksmal and Hognorsk.
Mark
Mark, the Bokmål-Wikipedia includes Riksmål. There is an ongoing vote to decide the name used in language links, which may or may not include Riksmål; no matter how that turns out, Riksmål is welcomed.
Høgnorsk is still welcomed on nn:; there are only a few hundred users of Høgnorsk, and although one or two of those found their way to Wikipedia, there hasn't been any contributions in the last months, as far as I can tell.
I might also add that the accepted policy on no: is to not aggressively go after articles in Nynorsk and translating them to Bokmål. In fact, several contributions have been made in Nynorsk after the new language policy was decided upon, and no one has been yelling about it. It's more a matter of having the right to translate them if you're a Bokmål or Riksmål user and want to work on the articles (ensuring first that the Nynorsk version or a better version exists at nn:), and to use Bokmål/Riksmål for all article names and Bokmål for category names (it's accepted that categories should be in the majority form, since redirects don't work for categories). If we can keep things this way, it won't be as much a ban against Nynorsk on no: as a guarantee that where a Nynorsk article exists at nn:, there can also be a Bokmål article at no:.
Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]]
People have been telling the new contributors about the Nynorsk Wikipedia, I hope? It would be a shame to have these people donate heaps of effort writing articles in Nynorsk for no: when they could be doing it at nn: where they would fit in better.
Mark
On 01/05/05, Chris Nyborg c-nybor@online.no wrote:
-----Opprinnelig melding----- Fra: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org]På vegne av Mark Williamson Sendt: 1. mai 2005 05:07 Til: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Emne: Re: SV: [Wikipedia-l] Language policy agreement in theNorwegianWikipedia community
I'm still curious re: Riksmal and Hognorsk.
Mark
Mark, the Bokmål-Wikipedia includes Riksmål. There is an ongoing vote to decide the name used in language links, which may or may not include Riksmål; no matter how that turns out, Riksmål is welcomed.
Høgnorsk is still welcomed on nn:; there are only a few hundred users of Høgnorsk, and although one or two of those found their way to Wikipedia, there hasn't been any contributions in the last months, as far as I can tell.
I might also add that the accepted policy on no: is to not aggressively go after articles in Nynorsk and translating them to Bokmål. In fact, several contributions have been made in Nynorsk after the new language policy was decided upon, and no one has been yelling about it. It's more a matter of having the right to translate them if you're a Bokmål or Riksmål user and want to work on the articles (ensuring first that the Nynorsk version or a better version exists at nn:), and to use Bokmål/Riksmål for all article names and Bokmål for category names (it's accepted that categories should be in the majority form, since redirects don't work for categories). If we can keep things this way, it won't be as much a ban against Nynorsk on no: as a guarantee that where a Nynorsk article exists at nn:, there can also be a Bokmål article at no:.
Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]]
On 03/05/05, Mark Williamson wrote:
People have been telling the new contributors about the Nynorsk Wikipedia, I hope? It would be a shame to have these people donate heaps of effort writing articles in Nynorsk for no: when they could be doing it at nn: where they would fit in better.
As long as somebody enters either nn: or no: via the main page, they cannot really miss the existance of the other. For some months now, we have, in order to encourage activity on both Norwegian wikipedias, had the featured articles of the week from the other wikipedia displayed on the main page, just below the local featured article. The two Norwegian wikipedias enjoy an excellent diplomatic and productive relationship, and there is a general feeling of encouragement of "cross-Norwegian" activity
Indeed, both nn and no are also showing the featured articles of Swedish and Danish on the main page, thus including all four major written varieties of Scandinavian language. Also Danish Wikipedia has followed suit by rotating through the other three wikipedias' featured articles on a daily basis. Swedish Wikipedia is as of yet not doing the same. The work of copying across templates (unfortunately one cannot at this stage use templates from a different implementation of MediaWiki) is helped by co-ordination through Skanwiki, the Scandinavian meta-pages. There you can also find a common Scandinavian Village Pump (Tinget), links to resources valuable to all Scandinavian encyclopedists, and proposals for other activities that will encourage activity across the language borders. If you're Scandinavian, and wants to come by and see for yourself, your warmly welcomed to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skanwiki
Cheers, Bjarte (:meta:User:BjarteSorensen)
On 03/05/05, Bjarte Sørensen bjarte.sorensen@gmail.com wrote:
activity across the language borders. If you're Scandinavian, and wants to come by and see for yourself, your warmly welcomed to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skanwiki
And of course I want to extend my welcome to Skanwiki also to other Scandinavian speakers, in Iceland, Greenland, Faeroe Islands and Finland, as well as other parts of the world.
Regards, Bjarte
Hoi, There is a process for the start of new projects and for the start of new language versions. This is a formal process and it does not involve the voting of people. What it does involve is the existence of languages recognised in the ISO-639-3. As such Norwegian, or the no /nor code is considered a macro-language and does not qualify for a new project.
It is explicitly understood that by no.wikipedia.org we expect it to be Bokmal. Thanks, GerardM
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Portal:No
2005/4/25 Bjarte Sørensen bjarte.sorensen@gmail.com
Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have occurred around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest development and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia, so as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a small number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who want to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the contents of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a fairly unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in that it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union with Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing parts of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90% of Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by Ivar Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern Nynorsk differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is to Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German and Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the subdomain no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article count started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia. Many felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and claimed that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper case in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy to adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to include new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2% for Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current language policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either "Norsk (bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the subdomain should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct representation of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested is a server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb" today is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål) are ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an unofficial initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list at [[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a third Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of the two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the existing wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias (including Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of featured articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community, so as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this list in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and no:) Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Gerard, on my e-mail this shows as a reply to an e-mail thread from 2005. Was this your intention?
2012/3/21 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, There is a process for the start of new projects and for the start of new language versions. This is a formal process and it does not involve the voting of people. What it does involve is the existence of languages recognised in the ISO-639-3. As such Norwegian, or the no /nor code is considered a macro-language and does not qualify for a new project.
It is explicitly understood that by no.wikipedia.org we expect it to be Bokmal. Thanks, GerardM
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Portal:No
2005/4/25 Bjarte Sørensen bjarte.sorensen@gmail.com
Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have occurred around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest development and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia, so as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a small number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who want to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the contents of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a fairly unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in that it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union with Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing parts of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90% of Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by Ivar Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern Nynorsk differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is to Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German and Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the subdomain no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article count started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia. Many felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and claimed that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper case in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy to adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to include new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2% for Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current language policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either "Norsk (bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the subdomain should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct representation of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested is a server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb" today is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål) are ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an unofficial initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list at [[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a third Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of the two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the existing wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias (including Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of featured articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community, so as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this list in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]] (Administrator/bureaucrat
on
nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and no:) Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi, It did not trigger me that it was that old. If I had I would not have answered it. Thanks, Gerard
On 1 April 2012 02:22, M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard, on my e-mail this shows as a reply to an e-mail thread from 2005. Was this your intention?
2012/3/21 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, There is a process for the start of new projects and for the start of new language versions. This is a formal process and it does not involve the voting of people. What it does involve is the existence of languages recognised in the ISO-639-3. As such Norwegian, or the no /nor code is considered a macro-language and does not qualify for a new project.
It is explicitly understood that by no.wikipedia.org we expect it to be Bokmal. Thanks, GerardM
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Portal:No
2005/4/25 Bjarte Sørensen bjarte.sorensen@gmail.com
Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have
occurred
around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest development and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia, so as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a small number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who
want
to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the
contents
of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a fairly unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in that it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union with Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing parts of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90% of Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by
Ivar
Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern Nynorsk differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is
to
Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German and Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the subdomain no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article
count
started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia.
Many
felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and claimed that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper case in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy
to
adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to
include
new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2% for Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current
language
policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either
"Norsk
(bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the
subdomain
should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct representation of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested is a server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb" today is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål)
are
ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an
unofficial
initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list at [[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a
third
Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of the two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the existing wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias (including Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of
featured
articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community, so as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this list in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]] (Administrator/bureaucrat
on
nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and
no:)
Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I've certainly made that mistake before! Although, 7 years late is impressive... Where did you find the email?
I'm curious now, does anyone know what ended up happening with the Norsk Wikipedias? On Apr 1, 2012 9:16 AM, "Gerard Meijssen" gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, It did not trigger me that it was that old. If I had I would not have answered it. Thanks, Gerard
On 1 April 2012 02:22, M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard, on my e-mail this shows as a reply to an e-mail thread from 2005. Was this your intention?
2012/3/21 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, There is a process for the start of new projects and for the start of
new
language versions. This is a formal process and it does not involve the voting of people. What it does involve is the existence of languages recognised in the ISO-639-3. As such Norwegian, or the no /nor code is considered a macro-language and does not qualify for a new project.
It is explicitly understood that by no.wikipedia.org we expect it to
be
Bokmal. Thanks, GerardM
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Portal:No
2005/4/25 Bjarte Sørensen bjarte.sorensen@gmail.com
Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have
occurred
around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest
development
and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia,
so
as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a
small
number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who
want
to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the
contents
of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a
fairly
unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in
that
it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2
alpha-2
code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union
with
Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing
parts
of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90%
of
Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by
Ivar
Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern
Nynorsk
differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is
to
Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German
and
Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the
subdomain
no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article
count
started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia.
Many
felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and
claimed
that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper
case
in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy
to
adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to
include
new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2%
for
Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current
language
policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either
"Norsk
(bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the
subdomain
should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct
representation
of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested
is a
server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb"
today
is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål)
are
ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an
unofficial
initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list
at
[[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a
third
Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of
the
two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the
existing
wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias
(including
Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of
featured
articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community,
so
as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this
list
in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]]
(Administrator/bureaucrat
on
nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and
no:)
Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Sometimes Thunderbird sorts my mail in reverse chronological order; I wouldn't be surprised if that happened here.
Bob
On 4/1/2012 3:21 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I've certainly made that mistake before! Although, 7 years late is impressive... Where did you find the email?
I'm curious now, does anyone know what ended up happening with the Norsk Wikipedias? On Apr 1, 2012 9:16 AM, "Gerard Meijssen"gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, It did not trigger me that it was that old. If I had I would not have answered it. Thanks, Gerard
On 1 April 2012 02:22, M. Williamsonnode.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard, on my e-mail this shows as a reply to an e-mail thread from 2005. Was this your intention?
2012/3/21 Gerard Meijssengerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, There is a process for the start of new projects and for the start of
new
language versions. This is a formal process and it does not involve the voting of people. What it does involve is the existence of languages recognised in the ISO-639-3. As such Norwegian, or the no /nor code is considered a macro-language and does not qualify for a new project.
It is explicitly understood that by no.wikipedia.org we expect it to
be
Bokmal. Thanks, GerardM
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Portal:No
2005/4/25 Bjarte Sørensenbjarte.sorensen@gmail.com
Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have
occurred
around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest
development
and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia,
so
as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a
small
number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who
want
to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the
contents
of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a
fairly
unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in
that
it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2
alpha-2
code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union
with
Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing
parts
of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90%
of
Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by
Ivar
Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern
Nynorsk
differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is
to
Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German
and
Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the
subdomain
no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article
count
started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia.
Many
felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and
claimed
that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper
case
in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and>50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy
to
adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to
include
new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2%
for
Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current
language
policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either
"Norsk
(bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the
subdomain
should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct
representation
of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested
is a
server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb"
today
is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål)
are
ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an
unofficial
initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list
at
[[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a
third
Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of
the
two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the
existing
wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias
(including
Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of
featured
articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community,
so
as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this
list
in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]]
(Administrator/bureaucrat
on
nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and
no:)
Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Also, the no.* subdomain is alive and kicking; I'm actually working on upgrading their taxobox to actually serve its implied purpose-- for whatever reason, it hasn't so far displayed any sort of taxonomy. But that's about to change. :)
Bob
On 4/1/2012 3:21 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I've certainly made that mistake before! Although, 7 years late is impressive... Where did you find the email?
I'm curious now, does anyone know what ended up happening with the Norsk Wikipedias? On Apr 1, 2012 9:16 AM, "Gerard Meijssen"gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, It did not trigger me that it was that old. If I had I would not have answered it. Thanks, Gerard
On 1 April 2012 02:22, M. Williamsonnode.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard, on my e-mail this shows as a reply to an e-mail thread from 2005. Was this your intention?
2012/3/21 Gerard Meijssengerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, There is a process for the start of new projects and for the start of
new
language versions. This is a formal process and it does not involve the voting of people. What it does involve is the existence of languages recognised in the ISO-639-3. As such Norwegian, or the no /nor code is considered a macro-language and does not qualify for a new project.
It is explicitly understood that by no.wikipedia.org we expect it to
be
Bokmal. Thanks, GerardM
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Portal:No
2005/4/25 Bjarte Sørensenbjarte.sorensen@gmail.com
Dear all,
Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have
occurred
around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following voting.
This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest
development
and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia,
so
as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a
small
number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who
want
to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the
contents
of the two current Norwegian versions.
== A short language history of Norway ==
Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a
fairly
unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in
that
it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2
alpha-2
code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union
with
Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing
parts
of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål, resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90%
of
Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by
Ivar
Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern
Nynorsk
differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is
to
Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German
and
Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have Nynorsk as their first written language.
More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the Norwegian Language Council: http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
== A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the
subdomain
no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article
count
started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia.
Many
felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and
claimed
that there was no need to change and that it should continue its language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of "Norsk".
Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper
case
in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles and>50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
== Votes ==
The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy
to
adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to
include
new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2%
for
Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current
language
policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either
"Norsk
(bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the
subdomain
should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct
representation
of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested
is a
server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb"
today
is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
== Summary of the problem ==
Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål)
are
ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an
unofficial
initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list
at
[[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures against this activity was immediately created at [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a
third
Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of
the
two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the
existing
wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co- operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias
(including
Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of
featured
articles from neighbour wikipedias.
== Conclusion ==
Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community,
so
as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this
list
in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian Wikipedia.
From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]]
(Administrator/bureaucrat
on
nn:) Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:) Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:) Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:) Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:) Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:) Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:) Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:) Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:) Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and
no:)
Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]] Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]] Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]] Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]] Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]] Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]] Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org