[Foundation-l] Language specific versus contry specific Wikimedia foundation chapters

[Bjarte Sorensen]

Dear all,

I'm [[:nn:User:BjarteSorensen]] (as well as in en: and no:). Over at nn:
(Nynorsk or Neo-Norwegian), we are contemplating the creation of an association
for the promotion of an open-content encyclopedia in Neo-Norwegian.

Just for your briefing, Norway has just below 10 native languages, 3 of them
with a user base greater than 50,000 and with wikipedias (no:, nn: and se:). no:
and nn: are the only active wikis at the moment. These two languages are two
quite different written standards of the Norwegian spoken language, while se:
is North-Saami, a language of a totally different language group. nn: was
created in July, and has since September grown at a respectable rate for a wiki
of a language with an estimated 400,000 - 800,000 users. no: uses mainly Bokmål
or Dano-Norwegian with between 3 and 4 million users nationwide.

There are many sources one could seek for funding of the development of an
online open-content encyclopedia in Neo-Norwegian, as many non-governmental
organisations as well as governmental bodies for the promotion of this language
exist. However, this would probably not happen in many cases unless it
was ear-marked this particular wikipedia. When I say development, I mean funding
for things such as paid editors, for promotions and demonstrations,
competitions, advertisment etc., i.e. human resources, rather than donations
for hardware etc.

In order to receive money and distribute them fairly, a formal organisation
needs to be in place, of course.

So my question to the mailing-list is: If there was to be such an organisation
for the promotion or development of contents for a specific language wikipedia,
is it your opinion it should be in the name of Wikimedia, i.e. a
language-specific chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, or would it be best to
establish an independent group not associated with Wikimedia?

I believe this question may be relevant for other situations, too. Languages
know little about political borders. Looking forward to hear your opinions.

Yours sincerely,

Bjarte Sørensen