[Wikipedia-l] Request for new Wikipedia: bokmål

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

I have no very strong opinion right now on the linguistic reasons for
this proposal.  It's a very curious case, and it would take some time
for me to understand it well.

But I think the most important part of this proposal was this part,
which worries me a bit:

> Another reason to break out of the old Wikipedia for Norwegian, is
> that there have been complaints about certain administrators there
> abusing their power to block other users from introducing changes
> that contradict the personal views of those administrators.  (I have
> not experienced this, but some indignant users have turned to me for
> help.)  Rather than quarreling about this or start accusing people,
> I thought I'd offer to start a new encyclopedia where there will be
> no censorship (as long as the texts are in bokmål and not downright
> offensive), and where democratic guidelines regarding content are
> adhered to, as well as the principle of neutrality.

If there's a social problem, then I would say that splitting is very
much the wrong solution.  I'm sure there are two sides (or more :-))
to this story, but if your version is correct, then the outcome will
be that the existing wikipedia will continue to work under a bad set
of policies that don't work properly to ensure due process.

I do appreciate the attitude, I should add, of "not quarreling or
accusing people".  Very valuable.  But it need not be a quarrel or
accusations to talk in general terms about how to improve things going
forward.

--Jimbo