[Wikipedia-l] be: and be-x-old: interwiki

[Berto 'd Sera]

Hoi!

>If, for example, de.wiki admins would forbid the usage of de-1901 in
>de.wiki as a non-official variant, will it be ok?
Yes, if the community is okay with it. Maybe I could be personally against
the decision, but I don't vote in de.wiki (and I would not want to, I spend
more than enough time in wmf "as is").

> Why in the free encyclopedia one must not write in the language
>variant, let it be non-official now, which is in use, in which books
>and newspapers were and are printed now?
The variant in object is NOT official in any state. As a linguistic entity
it is not alternative to official Byelorussian (no ISO code). No matter how
many books and papers you print for us it simply does not exist. We do not
have ANY rule "for Byelorussian" (or for any other single language). We
treat Byelorussian just like anybody else.

I'm positive that whatever rule we will choose there will always be cases in
which the blanket is short. Yet by having a single public rule (instead of
making "ad hoc" votes) we at least avoid single arbitrary decisions. There
will be no change for this rule because changing it would require making a
"Byelorussian exception". 

The wmf cannot be a place in which exceptions are made, because once you
have exceptions you have special people who get special services (or less
services than normal people do) based on the fact that they have personal
positive or negative relations in the wmf. We want to maintain a situation
in which all linguistic entities are equal and decisions are made based on
factors that judges cannot control. 

The day in which a single exception will be accepted (no matter which one) I
will immediately resign from LangCom. All my work is spent to avoid having
people kissing the asses of bureaucrats and admin communities by needing to
request individual permissions based on "ad hoc" decisions; I'll better take
my buttocks out of the Committee before becoming a feudal power myself. 

To get rid of feudal powers we need clear public policies that anyone can
read and apply long before asking anyone. The process is far from being
over, yet we are working on it and hopefully the amount of arbitrary moves
required to allow a project will progressively collapse to zero. Not without
cases like yours, but that's life, sorry. There is no such rule like a rule
that has "everybody happy".

> The main problem is the smaller project be.wiki doesn't want to unite
> with the bigger be-x-old.wiki.
Smaller or bigger doesn't mean a thing to us. Be also aware that AFAIK there
is still an open proceeding that at least theoretically might end up in
closing be-x-old definitely. IMHO you should get at least ready to migrate
be-x-old content into a united version, in case that happens. No content and
none of the existing privileges (admins and bureaucrats) would be migrated
by the wmf, if and when such a decision is made. 

Public quarrels won't help, you'll simply end up in making the situation
between the two communities worse. No matter your orthography/accent
diplomacy works much better if you have real humans meet in front of a real
beer (or whatever else), instead of periodically exchanging accuses here.

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html