[Foundation-l] Fwd: Pt-Portuguese Wikipedia

Tue Mar 23 14:44:18 UTC 2010

Virgilio A. P. Machado wrote:
> I don't see any evidence that "nobody outside the 
> Portuguese community can see a problem" unless 
> one personal opinion should be considered proof.
>
> The statement was not about anybody outside the 
> Portuguese community seeing a problem, but that 
> "the issue keeps popping up". The very fact that 
> is being addressed here corroborates that 
> statement. Examples of previous discussions were 
> also provided spanning a period of five years. No 
> evidence has been produced to the contrary, i.e., 
> that the issue does not keep popping up.
>   
There is also clear evidence that the community
within the Portuguese wikipedia has a very good
handle on the issue, for all that the fomentation
around the European Portuguese issue seems to be
perennial.

> If "it all seems to be a lot of fuss about 
> nothing" that might be because appearances can be 
> deceiving and burring your head in the sand or 
> looking the other way will not make any existing 
> problems go away, although everybody is entitled 
> to ignore them. That's a very common attitude 
> when the problems are not at your doorstep, 
> although there's always the danger that they will 
> eventually get there. Again, the very fact that 
> this discussion is taking place here is a symptom 
> that there is a fuss about something.
>
>   
To me it seems that the great majority of people
who are themselves on the Portuguese wikipedia
do not think raising this issue time and again is
a useful pastime. Thus the issue of whether you are
or are not Portuguese language speaking yourself,
seems to me a moot point.

> No statements were made concerning the creation 
> or not of a "two-wiki solution". It's nice to 
> know that someone believes that "the wider 
> Wikimedia community will never accept a two-wiki 
> solution". Hopefully not everybody will have such 
> a preconceived idea and keep an open mind about 
> the specific needs of specific projects. Until 
> the problems and needs are properly accessed it 
> is premature to dismiss any alternative solution.
>
>   
I'll agree that "two-wiki solution" in this connection
is very poor phrasing. Adding a European Portuguese
only wikipedia wouldn't be a solution, and it wouldn't
be "two-wiki", since I believe there currently exist
*at least* two wikipedias relating to the Portuguese
language grouping, namely Portuguese and Galician.

The issue is really whether how to discern the degree
of apartness within the *many* Portuguese dialects,
including not only European and Brazilian but the
African, creole Portuguese etc, and which can not
reasonably be expected to be able to contribute
within the default Portuguese wikipedia.

One does not need to dismiss a proposed solution,
to point out the inherent problems with it. And
creating a European Portuguese only wikipedia
would create many problems, of such weight, that
though not dismissing the concept as a theoretical
possibility, it is easy to weigh the pros and the cons,
and come to a fair *evaluation* that it would be a
very problematic "solution".

My personal evaluation tends to be that an European
only wikipedia is not a good solution, though I am not
sure about the African Portuguese or the Creole Portuguese
cases -- purely because I have not at all studied
the issues with those. I would agree that there is still
perhaps too much resistance towards creating
separate wikipedias for creoles, dialects and the
like -- in the general case -- though I don't think a
European Portuguese only wikipedia is a case where
it is ideally justified.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen