Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:40:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com
<snip>
--- Felipe Sanches felipe.sanches@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia new language request. There are 182.1 million people in Brazil who use Brazilian
Portuguese
as their main language. Brazilian Portuguese IS NOT the same as Portuguese (domain pt.wikipedia.org) and it still isn't on the list
In Norway there are two official forms of written norwegian (bokm�l ~90% and nynorsk ~10%) that I suppose differ more than br_pt and pt_pt judging from the comments here on the list. In addition there is one (perhaps two) "unofficial" conservative form also in use(riksm�l), especially by one of the first and most active contributors (Wolfram). We have had some long and "disruptive" discussions and and I suspect that new contributors /might/ have been turned off by the dominant form bokm�l being used on the interface and on almost all articles.
Recently a new contributor has been wary of the dominance of bokm�l and wanted to start a new nynorsk wikipedia, which has also been done, just like that! http://nn.wikipedia.org
the discussions that ensued before and after have resulted in me making this (roughly translated) policy, which nobody has disagreed with yet (the most active users in the discussion have agreed):
1 Articles on the norwegian Wikipedia can be written in any currently active form of norwegian. 2 Since Wikipedia is a [[wiki]], anyone ''can'' change the language form of an article, it should then be up to this user to: 2.1 Change the language form of the whole article in one operation. 2.2 Move the article to a new name if needed. 2.3 Not do this to provoke or harm the work of others. 2.4 Communicate the content as good or better than before.
It is quite finished yet, I found some errors now, but I think this will prevent the balkanization of the Norwegian Wikipedia.
--Dittaeva
Hello!
I would like to make some comments about the first message from Felipe Sanches.
Filipe Sanches proposes the creation of a Brazilian Portuguese Wikipedia because in his view, Brazilian Portuguese is not the same language as the one used in the Portuguese language wikipedia.
The Portuguese wikipedia (pt.wikipedia.org) is not the wikipedia of european portuguese language nor the wikipedia of Portugal. It's the wikipedia of all the speakers of the Portuguese language. One of founders of pt.wikipedia.org is Rodrigo Nishino from Brazil.
We now have a growing community of users from Portugal and Brazil and at least one user from Mozambique. We have a neutral policy and everybody can write in its own flavour of the Portuguese language. We have articles in the Brazilian flavour of the language and article in the European flavour of the language. We developed rules to prevent conflicts between Brazilian and Portuguese users:
1. Edits that change an article from a flavour to another are prohibited unless more than 50% of the content of article is improved. 2. Articles can't be moved from a title prevalent in one flavour to a title prevalent in another. 3. When an article has two possible titles both are mentioned in the first sentence of the article. 4. Words unfamiliar to one of the sub-communities may have a link to a entry in the wiktionary.
I hope we will soon implement a new rule that allows changes to a more neutral language every time a word or expression causes conflicts. In summary, we applied the neutral point of view to our problem.
Conflicts are usually caused by newcomers that are not familiar with the rules of the community. Most of the time, troublemakers are people with no intention to contribute to the project, but want to make a political statement. Ironically they may be Brazilians complaining that wikipedia.pt is mainly Portuguese and Portuguese complaining that the wikipedia.pt is too much Brazilian. Some of them want to fork because they want a wikipedia to represent the point of view of Brazilians or the point of view of the Portuguese. They clearly don't understand that the neutral point of view is inegotiable. They would have to fork from the Wikipedia Community and not only from the pt.wikipedia.
There are of course, people with good intentions that want to fork. But they are, for the moment, a small minority.
In my opinion, forking is, for the moment, a bad option from the point of view of any well intentioned wikipedian. In the Portuguese speaking world, conventional encyclopaedias (commercial encyclopaedias) are written in a neutral flavour of the language that is pleasant both to the Brazilians and to the Portuguese. That's precisely the flavour of the language that must be adopted by an encyclopaedia writer. A neutral flavour is also the most adequate to an encyclopaedia.
Additionally, the pt.wikipedia is still a weak community. A large number of users still need to absorb some of the most fundamental wikipedia policies like the neutral point of view and the copyright issues. And we have only about 13 000 articles, most of them stubs or incomplete articles. A fork would produce two smaller and even weaker communities. Our common resources would be wasted in a duplication of efforts.
JoaoMiranda
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:41:12 -0700 (PDT), leercontainer-wikimedia@yahoo.com leercontainer-wikimedia@yahoo.com wrote:
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:40:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com
<snip> > >--- Felipe Sanches <felipe.sanches@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Wikipedia new language request. >> There are 182.1 million people in Brazil who use Brazilian Portuguese >> as their main language. >> Brazilian Portuguese IS NOT the same as Portuguese (domain >> pt.wikipedia.org) and it still isn't on the list
In Norway there are two official forms of written norwegian (bokm�l ~90% and nynorsk ~10%) that I suppose differ more than br_pt and pt_pt judging from the comments here on the list. In addition there is one (perhaps two) "unofficial" conservative form also in use(riksm�l), especially by one of the first and most active contributors (Wolfram). We have had some long and "disruptive" discussions and and I suspect that new contributors /might/ have been turned off by the dominant form bokm�l being used on the interface and on almost all articles.
Recently a new contributor has been wary of the dominance of bokm�l and wanted to start a new nynorsk wikipedia, which has also been done, just like that! http://nn.wikipedia.org
the discussions that ensued before and after have resulted in me making this (roughly translated) policy, which nobody has disagreed with yet (the most active users in the discussion have agreed):
1 Articles on the norwegian Wikipedia can be written in any currently active form of norwegian. 2 Since Wikipedia is a [[wiki]], anyone ''can'' change the language form of an article, it should then be up to this user to: 2.1 Change the language form of the whole article in one operation. 2.2 Move the article to a new name if needed. 2.3 Not do this to provoke or harm the work of others. 2.4 Communicate the content as good or better than before.
It is quite finished yet, I found some errors now, but I think this will prevent the balkanization of the Norwegian Wikipedia.
--Dittaeva
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Joao, I wanted to express my full agreement with all of the principles that you discuss. I repeat that I don't know enough about the differences in language to be able to say anything about what the right answer is, but I will say that I think that the approach you are taking is the right one in terms of the _principles_ involved.
We developed rules to prevent conflicts between Brazilian and Portuguese users:
- Edits that change an article from a flavour to another are
prohibited unless more than 50% of the content of article is improved. 2. Articles can't be moved from a title prevalent in one flavour to a title prevalent in another. 3. When an article has two possible titles both are mentioned in the first sentence of the article. 4. Words unfamiliar to one of the sub-communities may have a link to a entry in the wiktionary.
One additional etiquette guideline that you might consider is something like our rule on en: "Articles which focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally aim to conform to the spelling of that country." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Usage_and_spelling
Presumably on topics that are particular to Portugal or Brazil, it can be an easier read if that flavour of language is followed.
I hope we will soon implement a new rule that allows changes to a more neutral language every time a word or expression causes conflicts. In summary, we applied the neutral point of view to our problem.
Whenever possible, this certainly seems wise.
There are of course, people with good intentions that want to fork.
Yes, of course, and these people must be respected and accomodated, and their legitimate concerns addressed as much as possible.
In my opinion, forking is, for the moment, a bad option from the point of view of any well intentioned wikipedian. In the Portuguese speaking world, conventional encyclopaedias (commercial encyclopaedias) are written in a neutral flavour of the language that is pleasant both to the Brazilians and to the Portuguese. That's precisely the flavour of the language that must be adopted by an encyclopaedia writer. A neutral flavour is also the most adequate to an encyclopaedia.
Additionally, the pt.wikipedia is still a weak community. A large number of users still need to absorb some of the most fundamental wikipedia policies like the neutral point of view and the copyright issues. And we have only about 13 000 articles, most of them stubs or incomplete articles. A fork would produce two smaller and even weaker communities. Our common resources would be wasted in a duplication of efforts.
These last two points are particularly worthy of emphasis. The first is that neutral language and flavor is the most adequate to an encyclopedia anyway. The second is that a split of a young community like this would likely delay the achievement of major milestones by many years.
--Jimbo
I agree with Jimbo here. Portuguese is one language, just as English is one language, despite regional differences, and despite some ignorant (in my view) people saying they don't speak English, but American. And though I may find British accents and spelling funny, that's simply what they do, and if I were to move there or visit, I'd change how I spell things to follow their norms. But despite our differences, we are all still English speakers, just as Mexicans, Colombians, and Spaniards are all Spanish speakers, and Germans, Swiss, and Austrians are all German speakers. We all have our regionalisms, but we can all rise above those regionalisms and understand each other. Saying there should be 2 Portuguese Wikis is like saying we need an Australian, British, American, and Canadian English Wiki, or Swiss, Austrian, and German Wiki. Redundancy, splitting of community efforts, and in general, diluting the language's wiki growth.
But that's just me.
Jimmy
PS - How goes that Anglo-Saxon wiki?
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 7:45 PM To: joao miranda; wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Brazilian Portuguese
Joao, I wanted to express my full agreement with all of the principles that you discuss. I repeat that I don't know enough about the differences in language to be able to say anything about what the right answer is, but I will say that I think that the approach you are taking is the right one in terms of the _principles_ involved.
We developed rules to prevent conflicts between Brazilian and Portuguese users:
- Edits that change an article from a flavour to another are
prohibited unless more than 50% of the content of article is improved. 2. Articles can't be moved from a title prevalent in one flavour to a title prevalent in another. 3. When an article has two possible titles both are mentioned in the first sentence of the article. 4. Words unfamiliar to one of the sub-communities may have a link to a entry in the wiktionary.
One additional etiquette guideline that you might consider is something like our rule on en: "Articles which focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally aim to conform to the spelling of that country." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Usage_and_spelling
Presumably on topics that are particular to Portugal or Brazil, it can be an easier read if that flavour of language is followed.
I hope we will soon implement a new rule that allows changes to a more neutral language every time a word or expression causes conflicts. In summary, we applied the neutral point of view to our problem.
Whenever possible, this certainly seems wise.
There are of course, people with good intentions that want to fork.
Yes, of course, and these people must be respected and accomodated, and their legitimate concerns addressed as much as possible.
In my opinion, forking is, for the moment, a bad option from the point of view of any well intentioned wikipedian. In the Portuguese speaking world, conventional encyclopaedias (commercial encyclopaedias) are written in a neutral flavour of the language that is pleasant both to the Brazilians and to the Portuguese. That's precisely the flavour of the language that must be adopted by an encyclopaedia writer. A neutral flavour is also the most adequate to an encyclopaedia.
Additionally, the pt.wikipedia is still a weak community. A large number of users still need to absorb some of the most fundamental wikipedia policies like the neutral point of view and the copyright issues. And we have only about 13 000 articles, most of them stubs or incomplete articles. A fork would produce two smaller and even weaker communities. Our common resources would be wasted in a duplication of efforts.
These last two points are particularly worthy of emphasis. The first is that neutral language and flavor is the most adequate to an encyclopedia anyway. The second is that a split of a young community like this would likely delay the achievement of major milestones by many years.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
James R. Johnson wrote:
I agree with Jimbo here. Portuguese is one language,
Just to be clear, and I'm not disagreeing with James at all, I just wanted to make clear that *I* have not said that "Portuguese is one language". I am not even remotely qualified to make a judgment about that.
What I am qualified to do is to talk about the right kinds of reasons we should use for deciding the matter, reasons that for example don't include nationalism, and that do include trying to relax and get along with people and try hard to learn about other people.
--Jimbo
On Thursday 19 August 2004 22:54, James R. Johnson wrote:
I agree with Jimbo here. Portuguese is one language, just as English is one language, despite regional differences, and despite some ignorant (in my view) people saying they don't speak English, but American. And though I may find British accents and spelling funny, that's simply what they do, and if I were to move there or visit, I'd change how I spell things to follow their norms. But despite our differences, we are all still English speakers, just as Mexicans, Colombians, and Spaniards are all Spanish speakers, and Germans, Swiss, and Austrians are all German speakers.
German is three distinct languages: Plattdeutsch (which has its own Wikipedia), Hochdeutsch (standard German), and Oberdeutsch (spoken in higher lands such as Switzerland). Swabian, an Oberdeutsch dialect, is pretty hard for a Hochdeutscher to understand. Luso and Brasileiro are hardly different at all: septimo/setimo, seu/dele (one of them, I forget which, says "seu" for "your" (de você) and "dele" for "his"), ananas/abacaxi. This is no different than American and British color/colour or tomahawk/hatchet (both A and B say "hatchet" but "tomahawk" is an Algonquian word - which somehow got all the way to PNG as "tamiok").
phma
Plattdeutsch isn't really German...it's Low Saxon, descended from Old Saxon, a Germanic relative of Old High German and Old English. It has the one plural form in the present and past like OE, but shares features of German, except the Second Consonant Shift. Swiss is like German Ebonics to me, but ask a German what he thinks. Or I will once I move there in a month...actually...I'll get back to you on that last comment, after I e-mail one of my fellows at FHK.
James
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pierre Abbat Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2004 11:53 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Brazilian Portuguese
On Thursday 19 August 2004 22:54, James R. Johnson wrote:
I agree with Jimbo here. Portuguese is one language, just as English is one language, despite regional differences, and despite some ignorant (in my view) people saying they don't speak English, but American. And though I may find British accents and spelling funny, that's simply what they do, and if I were to move there or visit, I'd change how I spell things to follow their norms. But despite our differences, we are all still English speakers, just as Mexicans, Colombians, and Spaniards are all Spanish speakers, and Germans, Swiss,
and Austrians are all German speakers.
German is three distinct languages: Plattdeutsch (which has its own Wikipedia), Hochdeutsch (standard German), and Oberdeutsch (spoken in higher lands such as Switzerland). Swabian, an Oberdeutsch dialect, is pretty hard for a Hochdeutscher to understand. Luso and Brasileiro are hardly different at all: septimo/setimo, seu/dele (one of them, I forget which, says "seu" for "your" (de você) and "dele" for "his"), ananas/abacaxi. This is no different than American and British color/colour or tomahawk/hatchet (both A and B say "hatchet" but "tomahawk" is an Algonquian word - which somehow got all the way to PNG as "tamiok").
phma
-- li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
It should be noted, however, that a "tomahawk" is specifically a hand ax used for fighting and esp. throwing. And a very destructive missile.
Speaking as an American, most places I go, I simply hear "axe."
James
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Austin Hair Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2004 12:13 AM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Brazilian Portuguese
It should be noted, however, that a "tomahawk" is specifically a hand ax used for fighting and esp. throwing. And a very destructive missile.
-- Austin D. Hair austin@austinhair.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Callidus http://www.austinhair.org/
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