[Wikipedia-l] Re: no: or nb: (again)

Thu Mar 3 06:05:00 UTC 2005

Dear Mark Williamson, Lars Alvik, Andre Engels and Wolfram (who is getting 
a BCC of this message),

This is getting so old... <sigh> I agree with Lars Alvik that the no:/nb: 
Wikipedia is de facto Norsk (Bokmål).  The user interface is about 100% 
percent Norsk Bokmål, the vast majority of the articles are Norsk Bokmål 
(with varying tendencies towards centrist Bokmål or towards "Moderate 
Bokmål"/ Riksmål). Few, if any, new articles are written in Nynorsk. I 
don't know what the proportions of existing articles are, but I suspect 
that well under 5% of the articles are in Nynorsk now.

nn: is being marketed as "Nynorsk Wikpedia". I am not sure what the 
consensus about name for the no:/nb: Wikipedia is. A couple days ago, I 
looked around for it, but could not find it. It doesn't really matter very 
much for this discussion what self-designation no:/nb: uses. Nynorsk 
Wikipedia has a seeming discrepancy of names between its marketed name 
(Nynorsk Wikipedia) and the interwiki link name (Norsk (Nynorsk)). It is 
extremely unlikely that having a similar discrepancy between marketed name 
and interwiki link name is going to have any adverse effect whatsoever on 
no:/nb:.

Whether Nynorsk or Bokmål or Riksmål (or Samnorsk or Høgnorsk, at that) is 
the good or bad "guy", the oppressor or oppressed, or the "relevant" or 
"irrelevant" one in whatever connection, seems to be a factor of very 
little relevance.

Interwiki link language names should first and foremost be precise and 
descriptive -- right...?

At present there is one Wikipedia with a Bokmål interface (for the record, 
the difference between "Moderate Bokmål" and Riksmål is, at most, a few 
dozen words with spelling differences of one or two letters) and almost 
exclusively Bokmål(/Riksmål) articles. This Wikipedia, which was 
established in 2001, is doing quite well -- right now, the article count 
shows 18,679 articles.

There is also one Wikipedia with a Nynorsk interface (which includes a few 
articles in Høgnorsk). It was started in July 2004 and has 3430 articles 
right now -- it is, in other words, also doing quite well.

Both these are predominantly written in an official form of Norwegian. 
Neither of the two is more Norwegian, and neither is less.
Nynorsk corresponds most closely to the spoken language of the majority of 
Norwegian speakers, Bokmål is written by the majority of Norwegian 
speakers. Both are recognised as official languages of Norway. Both have a 
large body of literature on a high quality level. As such, they are both 
important, relevant expressions of Norwegian and should be treated with the 
tolerance, fairness and respect they both deserve.

The term "Standard Norwegian" (quoted by Andre Engels from a message from 
Wolfram to him) is a bit of a stretch: There is in fact (as already 
mentioned above) no single "Standard Norwegian", but *two*: Bokmål 
(including subsets like Riksmål, moderat bokmål and radikalt bokmål; and, 
to some extent, Samnorsk) and Nynorsk (including subsets like Høgnorsk, 
Midlandsnormal, Austlandsk, etc.)

To Wolfram's defense (since he doesn't subscribe to this list and hence 
can't defend himself directly on the list), it should be said that he does 
participate on nn: -- in editing, in debates, as well as in uploading 
files, and his contributions are as welcome on nn: as I hope that mine, and 
others' who also write primarily on nn: these days, are on no:/nb:... :-)

Lars Alvik (whose opinions and discussion manners I have learned to respect 
very much), wrote (03:10 03/03/2005 +0000):
>Go for no:.
>Riksmål can be compared to bokmål as american english and english.  Minor 
>differences. As for Aftenposten it's in theory riksmål, but  generally the 
>articles is written in moderate bokmål.
>
>As for me i would welcome a formalization of no: to just bokmål 
>(and  riksmål), but with bokmål as the dominant one, ie, all the 
>categories  in bokmål. (example Sør-Afrika instead of Syd-Afrika).

I agree almost 100% wholly with what Lars says here.
It would by all likelihood be a major benefit for the no: Wikipedia to 
formalise its language as Bokmål, with the very closely-related Riksmål 
being accepted as part of this.

One significant part of the reason why Nynorsk Wikipedia was established 
was that we wanted to be able to work in an environment tuned-in on Nynorsk 
as a written language. This is also very much what we have found to happen: 
Besides the basic fact-checking and debating of points of view, we have a 
strong emphasis on orthography, syntax, semantics and style.

I suspect that a change of politics on no: towards really focussing on 
Bokmål (in its variety) could have a similar effect, and it would very 
likely be a very good way of strengthening the Bokmål (widely defined) 
writing culture.

But whether the no:/nb: Wikipedia wishes to keep a few articles in Nynorsk 
or not, or what the no:/nb: Wikpedia is called is not really the main issue 
here, I think.

What the issue seems to be is more about what should show up in interwiki 
links.

I believe that the most precise and descriptive LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION in 
INTERWIKI links is "Norsk (bokmål)"
-- not "Norsk" (because it is only one of two subsets that are officially 
recognised as "Standard Norwegian"), and
-- and not "Bokmål", because this will be likely to cause confusion when 
users don't find the language under "N".

Whether this comes up by coding "nb:" or "no:" is not really important. It 
is the result that counts, right?

PLEASE NOTE that the question is NOT whether to call no:/nb: "Bokmål" or 
"Norsk".
The question is whether interwiki links on the bottom left of the screen 
should  display "Norsk (bokmål)" or just "Norsk".

It was suggested here earlier that no: be made a general "Norwegian" 
portal, and that nb: would be the primary code for the mainly Bokmål 
Wikipedia. That seems to be politically impossible in the current environment.

Maybe the most logical step in the current situation would be to change the 
display of the "no:" code so that it displays "Norsk (bokmål)" in interwiki 
links? That way, the interwiki links will be descriptive/factual: Norsk 
(bokmål) vs. Norsk (nynorsk), rather than prescriptive: Norsk vs. Norsk 
(nynorsk).

I will support such a modification wholeheartedly. If this happens, I am 
pretty sure that the Nynorsk wikipedia community will be as willing as 
anyone else to use the code no: exclusively if it displays a descriptive 
name of what no: de facto is.

Meanwhile, the use of a currently secondary interwiki code (nb:) is the 
only way to ensure logical interwiki links from Norsk (nynorsk) to Norsk 
(bokmål), and no matter how Wolfram feels about that, his argument that 
no:/nb: should decide their own name has as a consequence that nn: 
should  decide how to build interwiki links on their own project.

Since this question involves many other parties too, I personally find this 
question ("Norsk" vs "Norsk (bokmål)") to be one that should be discussed 
and resolved in an open, democratic, respectful and transparent way here on 
wikipedia-l -- a forum which is there precisely to work on solving these 
kinds of issues... That means that we should stay factual and try very hard 
not to avoid loaded characterisations like "Nynorsk hater"/"Bokmål 
hater"/"language fanatic" and the like, or imprecise expressions like 
"Standard Norwegian" when Bokmål(/Riksmål) (only one out of two standard 
forms of Norwegian) is implied.

(When it comes to acceptance/non-acceptance of specific language varieties, 
that is a totally different issue that would be at least as logical to 
resolve locally to the extent possible.)

I wish that Wolfram, who plays a rather central rôle on no:/nb:, would 
participate here and join the open debate in the "Wikipedia spirit". The 
burden isn't really that big -- after all, one doesn't have to read every 
single message. But it is useful for all parties if central people are able 
to participate in debates about their "own" project when these discussions 
occur...

Respectfully,

Olve Utne

("User:Olve" -- bureaucrat of nn:, admin of no:/nb:, user on en:, sv:, da:, 
etc.)

___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org