[Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Filip Maljkovic wrote:

>> What kind of doublespeak is that? The purpose of language is to 
>> confer meaning. If the three
>> dialects are mutually intelligible and we have a means to deal with 
>> differences in script, then
>> there is in fact just one language as far as we are concerned. In 
>> other words, if articles in one
>> can be copied to the others and only require minor changes in writing 
>> (if at all; esp in cases of
>> use of the same script), then there is only one language and thus 
>> only a need for one wiki.
>> -- mav
>>
> Are you people crazy or blind? The point is that THESE PEOPLE DON'T 
> WANNA HAVE 1 ENCYCLOPEDIA. 

If absolutely nobody wanted an sh-Wikipedia we wouldn't be having this 
discussion at all.

> The proof is everywhere. E.g. why were SR, HR and BS created? Because 
> people wanted to. Why is SH so underdeveloped (and 200, not 2000, is a 
> very optimistic number for articles made in the project, not copied 
> word by word from elsewhere)?  Because close to no one wants to 
> contribute to it. Is there an ISO for SH? No there isn't. And you 
> can't really compare English with these languages. There's been a war 
> for crying out loud. 

Since when does some silly war solve anything?

> People have been through a lot and you can't just neglect the 
> political aspect. Has there been any resistance in, say, Australian or 
> Canadian communities? I don't think so. 

My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom 
immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see 
Serbo-Croatian as one language.

> Unlike English, these three languages are not that similar and, 
> because of the cultural and political reasons (again, you can't 
> neglect those, because those are some of the lifes' aspects; after 
> all, we aren't robots), one project shared by all three language users 
> could never exist. You just cannot force people to merge the knowledge 
> after the projects have been successful for a few years on their own. 
> You'd definitely get resistance and you'll just disrupt the Balkans 
> again. You'd do more damage than good. 

Unlike Mav, I do not support an imposed merger of these projects.  It 
might be nice if they did, but I don't see anything realistic about that 
possibility.

> SH is holding up because less than a handful of people are 
> "contributing" to it. 

That's an apparent fact.

> The reason why I want this project closed is because it's really 
> unnecessary to have a 4th encyclopedia, when 3 are functioning just 
> great on their own. 

If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a natural 
death.  As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed there will be 
resistance, and that will keep it alive.  Once we are sure that it has 
stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the life support systems.

> Now all of a sudden, a group of foreign people just want to intervene 
> and decide what's best for us, without any information at all. Why is 
> that "foreigners" (I am using this word to describe people that don't 
> speak SR, BS or HR) only voted for keeping SH whereas most of the 
> local people voted for closing?

Sometimes people outside are able to look at such situations in a more 
detached way.  "Democracy in America" (written in 1832) was one of the 
best analyses of what can go wrong with the American system, but it was 
written by a Frenchman.

> *Every problem in the world will get solved the minute someone from 
> the outside stops meddling!* 

The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very nice.

Ec