Gutza hett schreven: Ideally it shouldn't be a redirect to ro.wikipedia.org, but a portal page that provides an entrance point to ro.wikipedia, hu.wikipedia, rmy.wikipedia, de.wikipedia, uk.wikipedia, tr.wikipedia, ru.wikipedia, tt.wikipedia, sr.wikipedia, sk.wikipedia, pl.wikipedia and cs.wikipedia. So, all the languages spoken in Romania. Our subdomains are language codes, but the top-level domains are country-specific. See for example <http://wikipedia.ch/> or <http://wikipedia.de/>. Marcus Buck

as another alternative see wikipedia.ch Switzerland has four official languages (German, French, Italian, Rumantsch) whereas Swiss-German is in fact a group of Alemannic Dialects. -- Regards Manuel Schneider Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge www.wikimedia.ch

Marcus Buck wrote: Good point, I haven't thought of that distinction between TLDs representing countries and Wikipedia formalising languages. I for one agree with that view, regardless of what's happening in other countries. I'll go back to our domain benefactor and to the local Wikipedia community and see what kind of consensus we can reach. Thank you all for the input, this was helpful. Cheers, Gutza

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gutza wrote: We would certainly prefer it if he'd like to transfer ownership of the domain to the Wikimedia Foundation. Just changing the name servers is a little risky, since it's easy to lose track of the various domain ownerships, and it might end up not getting renewed or transferred out from under the current owner -- and the next owner might not be as friendly. As with most other country domains, we'd probably set up either a redirect or a portal page, depending on what seems the most appropriate for the linguistic situation. - -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

Brion Vibber hett schreven: Monolingual countries are a real rarity. I went through the full list of countries with ccTLDs and here is what I found: Iceland: only autochthonous language is Icelandic North and South Korea: autochthonous language is Korean, there is a Chinese minority, but it is not autochthonous Cuba: autochthonous language is Spanish, according to the Wikipedia articles I consulted, there is no creole, all indigenous languages are extinct and there are no large groups of speakers of other languages Maldives: only autochthonous language is Dhivehi That's it for the bigger countries. There are several little monolingual territories: Ascension Island, Bouvet Island, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, St. Helena, French Southern and Antarctic Lands. Some small colonial dependencies with the colonial language being the only language spoken and some uninhabited dependencies. Anguilla and Saint Pierre and Miquelon according to Wikipedia have small groups of non-English/non French speakers. Liechtenstein is monolingual German, but the Alemannic dialect spoken there has its own Wikipedia. San Marino is monolingual Italian, but the Romagnol dialect spoken there is sufficiently distinct to be part of a future Gallo-Romance dialect Wikipedia some time. Last but not least we have some countries on the Arabic peninsula which are officially monolingual Arabic. Those are United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Yemen has some very distinct South Arabic varieties, which are classified as own languages. The Arabic dialects of the other countries could get their own Wikipedias too some day, just as the Egypt Arabic is getting its own project just at the moment. United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia have very big groups of foreign workers too, which make up up to 81% of the population in the case of the United Arab Emirates. All other countries have multiple languages. Marcus Buck