[Wikipedia-l] nn (Norw. Nynorsk) wikipedia

[Olve Utne]

Hello,

In Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5, brion vibber wrote:
>There's a bug in the new wiki creation script which allows zh-tw, zh-cn,
>nn, and perhaps other language codes which are defined but had been
>intended as aliases to be automatically created as separate wikis. Such
>accidentally created wikis are not supported and may get closed down
>when noticed and someone gets around to backing up their content.

Tim Starling replied:
>I've altered it now so that languages have to be listed in both langlist
>and languages/Names.php before they can be created. So this sort of
>thing shouldn't happen anymore.

I see that nn (Nynorsk) is on your list of undesired entities.
Nynorsk is *an official written language* (not dialect) of Norway
beside the separate written language Bokmål (nb or bm).
Please note the following factors:

* Nynorsk and Bokmål are not "merely one language in different
   alphabets" (such as can be argued for Chinese trad. / simplified,
   Serbian / Croatian/Bosnian or Hindi / Urdu),
* They are not merely a slight orthographic variation
   of one language within different political entities
   (such as UK/US English and European/Brazilian Portuguese).
* They have a significant number of different basic terms,
   as well as significant differences in orthography,
   morphology and syntax.
* The current no.wikipedia is predominantly Bokmål,
   with only a small minority of the articles being written in Nynorsk
* There are only three registered Nynorsk users on bm.wikipedia,
   and there is consensus amongst these three (see below) that the
   development of nn.wikipedia should be worked on now -- partially
   because of the greater ease in finding Nynorsk writers for a Nynorsk
   wikipedia than for a Bokmål wikpedia with occasional Nynorsk articles.
   We also believe as a group (on nn.wikipedia) that Nynorsk writers
   joining the project will join the no.wikipedia project as well --
   thus hoping to strengthen the Norwegian wikipedia project as a whole.
* The participation in more than one wikipedia project is the norm rather
   than the exception amongst Scandinavian "wikipedians" in general.
   I participate actively on nn, no/bm, sv and en.
* Our "slogan" on the nn.wikipedia.org main page is:
   "Samhald gjev styrke og mangfald gjev rikdom!"
   This translates, with  as:
   "Samhold gir styrke og mangfold gir rikdom!" (Bokmål)
   "Sammenhold giver styrke og mangfold giver rigdom!" (Danish)
   "Gemenskap ger styrka och mångfall ger rikedom!" (Swedish)
   (In English, roughly:)
   "Cooperation gives strength and diversity gives wealth!"


I cannot see that there is any reason to block Nynorsk as a separate 
wikipedia any more than it would make sense to block Bokmål, Swedish or 
Danish as separate entities. Nynorsk is not any less defined as a language 
than the three other ones -- and all four of them are mostly mutually 
intelligible, by the way.

Why is a Nynorsk wikipedia any more undesirable than an  Elsässisch or 
Walon one? Or separate Portuguese/Gallego ones? Because some Bokmål users 
(officially a different language) are sceptical? Would it be right if 
Castilian wikipedians were free to deny a Catalonian wikipedia?

I support fully the advent of a common Scandinavian wikipedia with 
user-selected language interface and articles coordinated between the four 
official languages (and with parallel articles being useful in many cases) 
-- WHEN the time is ready.  But I also think it would be wrong to 
specifically inhibit the Nynorsk language's opportunity to participate 
fully and systematically in the building of material for a joined project 
on equal terms, rather than to be forced into the mainly Bokmål project as 
a not very visible or transparently organised minority.

Please refer to the page http://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Olve for 
the discussion and consensus amongst the Nynorsk users at this early stage.

Our plans are to continue the development of http://nn.wikipedia.org/ and 
to start recruiting new users actively when the user interface is more 
complete and there are a few more articles. We also have made it very clear 
in our discussion that we will strongly encourage these new writers to 
participate on http://no.wikipedia.org/ as well -- thus making sure that 
our project results in added diversity (through a Nynorsk wikipedia being 
made available) as well as a general strengthening of the no,wikipedia project.

Rather than having non-users of the language Nynorsk closing down this one 
out of the four separate Scandinavian written languages' wikipedias, it 
would be constructive if we could have some assistance in uploading the 
finished and available LanguageNn.php file and have one or more of the 
Nynorsk writers (currently: Olve, Dittaeva, BjarteSorensen) be appointed as 
an administrator/bureaucrat.

Any constructive dialogue and/or assistance is of course welcome!


Beste helsing (Best greetings),

Olve Utne


___________________

Olve Utne
http://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Olve
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Olve
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%E4ndare:Olve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Olve
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Olve