Let me preemptively apologize for the tone of this message.
Quick summary: if 'zh-min-nan' is not desirable, change to 'cfr.wikipedia.org'. See reasoning below.
Tim Starling, 2004-07-07 21:56:46+1000:
The reason for choosing zh-cfr can be summarised in one word: Aromanian. A wiki in the Aromanian dialect was requested, and it was agreed that we should have one, but there was a problem with choosing the subdomain. Aromanian does not have a distinct ISO 639 code, however it is listed in the Ethlnologue under the code RUP. We had used only ISO 639 codes up to that time.
The solution we came up with was to use the group ISO 639 code followed by the SIL code. This allows us to specify most languages in the Ethnologue without conflicting with the ISO standard, since ISO 639 codes do not contain hyphens.
All right. Now, explain why it is 'roa-rup' rather than just 'rup'? Why 'zh-cfr' rather than just 'cfr'? That is mixing ISO 639-1 unnecessarily with SIL code, which creates a monster: see paragraph below.
Maybe it is too late and the damage has been done, but one of the several reasonable candidate solutions would be: (option a) Wikipedia host 2-letter sequence -> look up in ISO 639-1 Wikipedia host 3-letter sequence -> look up in SIL Ethnologue But the current solution is: (option b) Wikipedia host containing hyphen -> look up in both ISO 639-1 or 639-2 and SIL And there is no understanding of which language is referred to when one encounters something internally contradictory such as en-frn.wikipedia.org. Is that English (ISO 639-1: en) or French (SIL: FRN)?? (One may argue that it will return 'This Wiki does not exist', but I still do not see why (b) is in any way necessary or better than (a) other than the farcical possibility of including ad hoc pidgins.)
Using the hyphenated language tags assigned by IANA, such as zh-min-nan, would conflict with this scheme. For example if we used zh-yue, it would be difficult to know what "yue" refers to. Is it an SIL code or an assigned code?
(option c) No, it would not. RFC 3066 adopts all ISO 639-1 language codes. Just look up in RFC 3066 (and transitively ISO 639-1).
We could use the RFC 3066 codes instead. This is still an option. However it wouldn't give us access to a large number of languages without resorting to awkward constructions such as x-sil-RUP.
(option c, corollary) And that is the thing one should do: using constructions such as x-sil-RUP when nothing more appropriate comes up elsewhere in RFC 3066. That is why such standards are useful -- they are usually very precise and expressive, however awkward one may consider.
If I'm wrong about that, feel free to explain it to me.
I have been arguing for the hardcore option (c), but I think a compromise is to consider option (a), which will involve (option a, implementation) 1) changing 'minnan' and 'zh-cfr' to simply 'cfr' 2) changing 'roa-rup' to 'rup' [3) any other adjustments]
[By the way, much of the SIL-inclusion problems have been argued about when RFC 3066 was being drafted ... and the result was x-SIL-RUP etc. Sorry to be speaking a bit ex cathedra, but I resent fighting battles already-won....]
If I understand correctly, Shizhao's problem is that holopedia.net, and by extension minnan.wikipedia.org, is written in a script peculiar to Taiwan. The writing there is thus not representative of min-nan generally. So wouldn't it be better to use the RFC 3066 code specific to Taiwanese, namely zh-min-nan-TW? Or indeed, in keeping with my earlier point about such language codes being cryptic and unnecessarily lengthy, why not use ho-lo-oe.wikipedia.org?
To give a glib answer: I do not think Shizhao speaks Minnan, otherwise he will rather contribute to Holopedia in whatever way he writes Minnan, or apply for zh-min-nan-CN.