Ahh, and if you think Dutch spelling and German spelling of Lowlands
Saxon are truly incompatible, check the archives of the mainpage at
nds.wiki -- People have in the past posted messages there in Duthc
spelt Lowlands Saxon, received responses in German spelling, and then
responded in turn to that in Dutch spelling.
People from across the border exchange mails in LS everyday on lowlands-l.
Mark
On 25/11/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
There is one
other thing wrong with voting for languages. You are supposed
to vote for a project if you are willing to help with that project.
That's quite untrue. If it were true, it would say so in some official
or quasiofficial page. And it doesn't.
Consequently I have not voted for nds-nl. For
people who vote AGAINST the
setup of a language there is no such barrier. There is nothing in there for
them. It does not have consequences.
...
Then, why don't we have Zlatiborian WP? Or American English?
If you requested a new language, "Meijssenish", and somehow managed to
find 5 or 6 people willing to work on it, does that mean that
opposition votes would not matter?
The voting system is implemented to weed out requests that have issues
with them or that might cause problems. Thus, Zlatiborian, American
English, Brazilian Portuguese, DDR-Sprach, and the like, were not
created, even though they had some supporters.
There has been a lot of acromony about this
language, Mark has moved it out
of the standard request page several times and it still just does not die.
No -- you've got it backwards. I have moved it BACK to the standard
request page; Servien has been moving it off of there to the Approved
requests page.
If anything it proves that people want this
language and want it badly. I do
No -- it proves that Servien is stubborn. He requested people to come
vote against the Veluws WP because he was afraid the proposal might
come through... even though that would've meant a Wikipedia in his
language in some form or another.
not understand what is in there for Mark. I do
know that a democracy and
voting where the votes do not carry the same weight is bad.
1) What there is for me, is that I think this request is absurd. So
far, only 2 (count it -- 2) native speakers have weighed in on this.
All other votes are from people who either do not speak the variety in
question at all, or who speak it not as their native language. Some
votes are based on the premise that it's to separate LS from the Dutch
WP, which Servien told some people, which is patently absurd. Now, I
would not oppose this request if I hadn't made 100% sure that no such
language exists.
According to a dialect atlas of LS referenced for me by Arbeo, there
are 4 dialects of LS:
1) North Lowlands Saxon
2) Westphalian
3) Eastphalian
4) Schleswigish.
The first dialect is the dialect used in the Netherlands, as well as
much of Northern Germany, and is the dialect used on the current
nds.wiki.
There are no significant isoglosses along the Dutch-German border.
Even the spraak/taal difference does not correspond to national
boundaries -- in Groningen, they say "spraak". Veluws has some
interesting linguistic features that distinguish it from other speech
of the Northern LS area, but Gronings doesn't. Gronings is barely
different from what's spoken in neighbouring Germany.
Also, the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages
recognises one language called "Low Saxon", as a regional language in
Germany and in the Netherlands. It doesn't recognise a separate "Dutch
Low Saxon" language or "German Low Saxon" language.
Now, if somebody requested a Westphalian WP, I'd support it because
Westphalian and Northern LS are not mutually intelligible easily. But
most Northern LS dialects are.
Wikipedias are created for separate languages, not separate countries.
What Servien is trying to do here is pretend that there is a separate
language, when in fact there is not. All pages about "Nedersaksisch"
note that it's spoken in NL and DE both. I found 0 references to a
so-called "Dutch Low Saxon" language, and no website or book which
considered the national border a real linguistic boundary.
The benefit to a Wikipedia in which people from different countries
cooperate is that national POVs are balanced. If Servien has his way,
he will have a WP of only Dutch people with largely conservative
views. Many things could be written there that would be declared POV
at nds.wiki.
Now, to address the "democracy" part -- Wikipedia is not a
"democracy". Majority does _not_ rule. We have a little thing called
"consensus". That means that there is general agreement. 3 people
disagreeing out of 18 is not "general agreement". Yes, the 18 people
are in a majority, but Wikipedia is designed so that the minority
doesn't have to bend over so the majority can do whatever it wants,
and the majority is encouraged to seek a compromise that more people
will agree on.
Now certainly, if it were 1 oppose vote to 50, that would be a
definite consensus. But 3 to 18 isn't. It means there are still
outstanding issues that need to be resolved, or the WP shouldn't be
created.
Now, if the ndsnl.wiki is created, that sets the precedent for other
potentially ridiculous WPs... at any moment when they just happen to
have a majority supporting (as Zlatiborian did for a few days), they
can say "Oh our request is approved now create it".
Mark
PS
Perhaps you want to know why I would vote against a Wikipedia, because
you think its creation won't affect me. Well, if you think that, it's
an incorrect assumption -- if a Wikipedia is created like that, for a
national boundary rather than a genuine linguistic boundary, it
degrades the status of the Foundation and of the project as a whole. I
do not want to see this happen.
Now, in all of this, it's also undeniable that Servien has not exactly
had exemplary behaviour either. He started out by being rather rude,
then moved on to trying to force his proposal through (at one point,
the vote was 15-4, and yet he still said it should be considered
"Approved" because of a majority, failing to understand the concept of
consensus and unresolved issues). He was impatient with questions, did
not provide full explanatory answers, and continued to be rude. More
recently, he has resorted to namecalling aswell.
--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin