[Wikipedia-l] Re: An honorable compromise and no: or nb: for

[Olve Utne]

Hello Lars,
Your English is quite OK, Lars -- no need to worry about that. :-)  As for 
this discussion taking place on wikipedia-l (and therefore in English) in 
addition to locally on no: and nn: (in the respective written language 
forms of Norwegian), I think that there are good reasons for that:

* The Norwegian language situation has some characteristics similar to the 
Czech/Slovak, the Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, the Bulgarian/Macedonian, and 
the Langue d'Oc/Catalonian/Castilian/Extremaduran/Gallego/Portuguese 
language clusters, and therefore of some interest to the general Wikipedia 
community.
* A bit of international perspective and input can be useful for the 
debates locally on no: and nn:.
* Potentially moving a Wikipedia of over 11,000 content pages is a 
significant change and has interest beyond the local user community.
* Use of an incorrect language code, whether this be changed (for 
correctness) or kept as is (for reasons of continuity of usage).


At Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:04:21 +0100, Lars Alvik wrote:
> >> Norwegian is a special language and merits special treatment. 
> Wikipedia sysops may see the case of the Norwegian language as an 
> exercise and a step in the direction of a multilingual Wikipedia!
>
>I still don't se the problem, and i don't like being told as a 
>12th  generation norwegian, that my language are foreign. I still don't 
>see  your point of view.


Nobody is trying to say that your language is foreign, as far as I can see 
anywhere. What some people are trying to say is: Neither is the other main 
written form of Norwegian. Bokmål as it currently exists is not inherently 
more or less foreign than Nynorsk.

My personal view, as I have pointed out on this list as well as in the 
discussions on both the no: and nn: Wikipedia, is that it would be the most 
*correct* solution to move no: to nb:. This would be, as someone recently 
pointed out on wikipedia-l, a pretty simple dump that would be of no 
practical consequence to the no:/nb: users. I have also pointed out that 
the solution of *not* moving no: is acceptable to me personally, even 
though I see it as less correct in the strict sense of the term -- mostly 
since a large number of nb contributors presumably would feel hurt by the 
political implications a move to nb: would carry -- namely, of nb: being a 
subset rather than the only standard Norwegian. While, as mentioned before, 
Bokmål and Nynorsk are indeed subsets of Norwegian (each with its solid 
literature, and each with equal status as official language), the political 
consequences of stirring up this rather delicate "balance" by explicitly 
moving Bokmål to its language code (nb, nob or nb-no) instead of the 
national domain (.no) would be likely to result in much resentment amongst 
high-profile Bokmål users. This resentment, regardless of its logical 
accurateness, might be counterproductive for the local wikipedia society as 
a whole.

I do not believe that a split of no: into no: and nb: is constructive. I do 
personally believe that a move of the current no: (which is, de facto, in 
Bokmål) to nb: would be best.  However, if this move is going to create an 
impossible ebvironment for cooperation between Bokmål and Nynorsk, then it 
is NOT worth it, and no: would (will?) be better of where it currently is.

All the best,
Olve


___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org