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

Wed Nov 10 10:05:32 UTC 2004

Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
 > 
 > Bjarte Sorensen wrote:
 >
 >> Bokmål stays at no: [...]
 > 
 > This sounds very reasonable.  Everybody should be happy.  I think this
 > is a lasting solution and not a temporary compromise.  I don't see a
 > switch to nb: anytime in the future.

I truly wish it was that simple!

The main problem with the (otherwise very nice) proposed solution is
the proposed use
of "no:" exclusively for the bokmål form, something most nynorsk users
will never accept.
Therefore, it is the existing solution which is the compromise, and the proposed
"compromise" is no compromise at all, but will probably be regarded by
many as the
bokmål users "stealing" the common "no:" code for their own use, thus
igniting a real
conflict.

It is misleading to say "Bokmål stays at no:", because "no:" was never
a pure bokmål
Wikipedia.  "no:" has so far been the *common Norwegian* Wikipedia. 
However, since
"nb:" exists only as a link to "no:", and since nynorsk now has its
own Wikipedia at "nn:",
almost all new articles in "no:" are in bokmål.  But that still does
not change the
meaning of the ISO code "no:".

 >> [...] for these reasons:
 >> * Interwiki-links will otherwise need to be corrected
 >> * Other active links (e.g. Google) will be rendered dead
 >> * www.wikipedia.org points to en.wikipedia.org, which is the major language

The first two reasons are simply false, as long as we do not remove
all existing articles
from "no:" when creating "nb:".  If we do move an article away from
"no:", we should
leave a link to its new home in "nb:" or "nn:", or to both if it
exists in both.  No problem,
and no dead links!

The third reason is a pretty far-fetched analogue to a different kind
of umbrella address.
If there were only two Wikipedia languages in the world, and they both
had the same
official status, I think that www.wikipedia.org would point to both,
not just to the bigger one.

> I'm frustrated with Swedish being such a small language, having only 9 million speakers,

(For your information, only 63 of the world's approximately 6,700
living languages
have more native speakers than that, so Swedish is in the top 1% if
we're talking size.
There is hardly any standard by which you can call Swedish a "small" language.)

As languages go, nynorsk actually has a rather big and active user
base, and most
nynorsk users are also very conscious (some would say "sensitive")
about language
issues, having always been overshadowed by its "bigger brother",
bokmål.  In many
contexts, nynorsk users resent very strongly the use of the word
"Norwegian" (or "norsk")
when what is meant is "bokmål".  I predict that by promoting such
inaccurate use of
the code for "Norwegian", the proposed solution would make a lot of
people very upset.

This was yet another (unspoken) reason why my original proposal did not opt for
any kind of renaming or moving of existing Wikipedias, just the
creation of a new one
("nb:") in addition to the existing ones.  I still think that is the
best way to go.

Ulf Lunde

Some references:
 Languages of the world ordered by number of users:
http://bertilow.com/lanlin/lingvoj.html
 Languages of the world ordered by language family:
http://geography.about.com/msub83.htm