Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Lombard Wikipedia

The result of the following proposal for closing a WMF project is to KEEP the project. Please, do not modify this page.

Proposal for closing Lombard wikipedia

What's this? Now someone simply blanked my vote This is deceit.--clamengh 13:42, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You're right. It was my fault. I restored your vote (BTW, only one vote). Please excuse my bad mistake. --Remulazz 13:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Mmh, please avoid cancel my vote as well--Vladimir1 10:36, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Ending due to no reasons for closure. Result: KEEP --Edward Chernenko 18:47, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

---

I'm asking to temporary close the Lombard wikipedia for the following reasons:

1. the management is too much oligarchical and ostracistical, therefore it is not possible to develop constructive arguments
2. the approach to some subjects does not correspond to the vision of Lombard culture, and uses literal translations from other languages
3. some neologisms are completely invented without motivation, drawing inspiration from other European languages, while suitable Lombard terms already exist
4. the admins of Lombard wikipedia have invented a new orthography, that is neither historically motivated nor corresponding to the real pronunciation
5. Lombard can't be considered an only language, because problems of understanding exist between speaking from different zones (there are at least one language per province)
6. Lombard has links in the article called Lombard langauge that go to the English Wikipedia.

See cancellation of my comments in [1]. I've been banned from the Lombard wikipedia for my proposals. User:Codice1000

Er, it all looks like a matter to be discussed, and nothing like a valid cause to freeze (not to say "closing") a wiki. Go on and draw attention elsewhere, please. - εΔω 11:26, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

See point 1. User:Codice1000

In order to see point 1, please use words that are understood. GerardM 13:57, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

• To the kind attention of ladies and gentlemen reading this page: please take a look at the user page of the above user: lmo:User:Codice1000.lmo, where reasons for banning him are clear. English translation are available upon request. A vote took place as well.--clamengh 15:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

---

Second proposal

I ask for the closure of the Lombard Wikipedia. I think it is a strange monster, maintained in an artificial life by a very small group of users that imposes its POV not only on the contents, but even on the language used.

I know that another request like this was made more than one year ago, without success. It was labeled as vandalism, and I still have not understood why. I'm trying to ask again only because I think that conditions are now worse than then, and lmo.wiki has not the requested characteristics for a Wikimedia project.

Arguments in support the closure of Lombard wikipedia (lmo.wiki):

• absolute absence of a Lombard language;
• as a result, artificial language used;
• dispotic behaviour of its administrator;
• absolute anti-italian attitude;
• very small real size.

Absence of a Lombard language

There are no valid sources stating the existence af a common, unified, standard Lombard language. All linguistic studies about lombard linguistics have always examinated every dialect separately. For example, the Milanese dialect has its own traditions, literature, dictionaries, theater works, and so the Ticinese dialect (spoken in Switzerland), the Brianzöö (Brianza, Brianzolo in Italian), the Bergamasque (the one of the mountains, the one of the city, and the one of the lowland), Brescian, Cremasque, Laghée (used in the upper Como Lake) and so on for all the (at least a dozen) remaining dialect and variants of the Lombard linguistic family, spreaded from upper Valtellina in the extreme northeast to Apennines in the southwest.

Even the western/eastern distinction used on lmo.wiki, at least for the main page (western and eastern), is artificial and doesn't express all the variability in the Lombard dialects. It simplifies too much.

If I remember well, some months ago the Akan edition of Wikipedia was closed because [...]is now considered a family of languages, and not a single language. (List_of_Wikipedias#Deprecated.2C_moved_and_other). Akan is identified with a unique ISO code (ak), like Lombard, but, despite this, is not a single language. And so is Lombard.

Artificial language used

A wikipedia edition, even the smallest one, needs some service pages; if Lombard is a melting pot of well-identified dialects, which one is to be used? In the beginning of this edition, a particular Western Lombard dialect was used, probably an insubric one (maybe the dialect of Como or of upper Brianza area).

The real masters of the Lombard wikipedia, Clamengh and 10caart, aware of this weakness, decided, emarginating and/or blocking all their oppositors, to create ex novo a strange Koiné Lumbarda (or Koiné Lombarda, I can't remember well), and to adopt it as a kind of lingua franca. (see here)

Clamengh and 10caart are both fans of Catalan and Occitan languages, and so they took the decision to make Lombard converge on them. Since then, all their effort were aiming to create this koiné with lot of Catalan and Occitan influences, on grammar and words. He invented lot of words, never used or heard in any corner of Lombardy or Canton Ticino:

• teratremul instead of teremott (earthquake, in Catalan terratrèmol)
• üsüari instead of uteent or utent (user, in Catalan usuari)
• dia instead of dì or dé (day, in Catalan dia): concerning this word, I can report a brief dialogue [2] between them, in which Clamengh was enthusiastic for having found, in a small poesy written in the dialect of Mantua, dating back to the half of sixteenth century (!!!!!!!), the word dia. Here Clamengh says to 10caart: ...we could use dia instead of dì or dé, to unify the language... What? We could use? One more proof they're inventing a language, there on lmo.wiki.

• Aquest tres mots provenen del llatí, llengua parlada fa uns 2.000 anys a la regió italiana del “latio”:

• • Terratrèmol: del llatí terra-ae: terra, i tremo tremolar.
  • Usuari: del verb llatí utor, d'origen semblant a l'anglès user.
  • Dia: del llatí dies-diei: dia, d'origen semblant a l'anglès day, encara que en aquesta llengua la i (o y) del mig a passat al final, intercanviant la seva posició amb la a.

• No es gens estrany que altres llengües romàniques, inclús aquelles que no ho són, comparteixin mots amb altres llengües romàniques. Inclús es possible que l'origen de moltes llengües europees sigui l'indoeuropeu, una llengua anterior a totes les actuals i que s'hauria parlat a llocs tant distants com la Gran Bretanya i l'Índia, o que per qualque motiu que no coneixem ha emparentat aquests dos llocs per medi de la llengua. Pérez 21:16, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Clamengh stated once he had the dream of writing a wikipedia in Cisalpine tongue; well, all the dialects and languages of northern Italy are closely related among them and, at the same time, they are quite far from standard Italian. But they are not the same language, neither a standard Cisalpine tongue has never existed. Clamengh aims to this. I think he achieved some results so far, provided that only some days ago he said to an anonymous user [3] to avoid changing in the ortography of an article. No lombard can understand this message, made with 20% a western lombard dialect, 20% an eastern one, 30% Catalan and 30% Occitan. Strange ortography, never seen in the literature. Who is him to invent a way to write a not existing language, and adopt it? Where are we? On the Clamengh wikipedia? Are we writing in Clamenghese language, writing it with the Clamengh standard?

Just have a look at the banner for this fundraising (here). What language is it? I was born in Lombardy, I grew up in Lombardy, and I have never seen such a language. It is so strange that another Lombard user has asked for more information. [4]

I do agree with you on the banner point and I remember asking to change that banner some time ago. I believe in a Lombard Wikipedia and not in a Catalombard Wikipedia (although personally I love both Catalonia and the Catalan language...).--Kemmótar 01:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, nobody but them has never heard speaking or seen writing this "Lombard", and nobody but them has not even heard speaking about its creation. I think to Esperanto, Volapük or even Sindarin or Quenya in Tolkien's world. We are assisting to the creation of a new artificial language, "on air" from Lombard wikipedia. Stay tuned, guys. Stay tuned.

They, together with Belinzona, stated this officially, by creating a category) and a template) in which they say they support the creation of a Lombard koiné. Creation? Of what?

The creation of a common Western+Eastern Lombard koiné is utopic (NB: this does not mean that the Eastern and Western L. are necessarily not mutually intelligible.--Kemmótar 19:33, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Wonderful. But why do you say this only now? They're studying this since fall 2006. --Remulazz 14:23, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

On Wikipedia projects, original researches about contents are strictly forbidden: so, if possible, more strictly forbidden should be the original researches about the language used to write it.

---

A little updating: here, Clamengh e Belinzona are discussing about the name of the language for the interwiki link (!) and about the word to use for the logo (!). ... la encyclopedia libra + l'encyclopédie livre, par nümm a saress mej, dapress ul puunt da vista diachrònigh, la encyclopédia livra, ch'ij elimina tüti i possibilitaa da conflit tra da nümm (W vs E, encilopedía vs. ensiclopedéa etc.)

Not considering this melting pot of dialects and the plural in s (interwikis), never seen in Lombardy, I would like to point out the words used here:

1. par nümm a saress mej, dapress ul puunt da vista diachrònigh, la encyclopédia livra ==> For us it would be better, from the diachronic point of view, la encyclopedia livra. For us? It would be better? What are they doing there? Livra? Who has ever heard livra to say free?
2. ... ch'ij elimina tüti i possibilitaa da conflit tra da nümm (W vs E, encilopedía vs. ensiclopedéa etc.). ==> ... that eliminates every chance of conflicts among us. Chances of conflict? Then it's true that Lombardy is divided into (at least) two linguistic branches.

One more proof that Lombardy has different languages, with chances of conflicts.

Dispotic behaviour

Clamengh and 10caart have been keeping a constant, steady behaviour aiming to eliminate every users had a different way to think lmo.wiki.

Have a look at the block log (lmo:Special:Ipblocklist).

Just some examples:

1. His first work, the blocking of user Codice1000. Blocked infinite only because he expressed some critics to this way to manage the languages and inventing new words. I know he committed some small vandalisms, that anyway usually deserve only a short block.

   Not al all. This bloch was decided mainly for racist statement against souther Italian people. Please check user page.

   No, I think you're wrong. Check out better. --Remulazz 15:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Moreover this user began with strong abuses towards other users.

2. Clamengh blocked infinite (accuse: vandalism) the IP 84.222.16.56.84 only because he dared to put, in some unsourced articles, a template stating Quell articol o sezion chì el pò vegh denter ricerch originaj o robb minga cert. Per cortesia jutii Wikipedia mettendegh denter i riferiment. Varda la pagina de discussion per savè. (This article or section can contain original researches or not demonstrated statement. Please help Wikipedia by inserting references. Have a look to the talk page to know how to do.). I still haven't understood where is the vandalism.

   The sources were explicitely stated in the article! This was a disruptive behaviour.--clamengh 13:39, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   No. You're wrong. There were no sources. A simple look at the page history is enough. --Remulazz 15:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

3. Same sad show with the IP 213.140.6.109; two edits, trying to make people understand that there are no certainties about writing in Lombard. Infinite.
4. Again, IP 84.222.8.141

I must say that the only right block is mine. I began my adventure on the Wiki world right on lmo.wiki. Only some months have been enough to realize how false and empty was the project, as organized in that way, and how fragile were its bases. I had a bad reaction to their provocations. Clamengh and 10caart refused to answer to all our questions (our is referred to every people that have expressed doubts about this way to operate, and they are much more than the three users that defended it), and I fell in the trap. No complaints, it was my fault. I have to say, anyway, that I had a behaviour like this only there on lmo.wiki, given the unbreathable atmosphere. I am active on it.wiki, where I have never had a problem and am sysop since November 8.

Congratulations. Probably that's the ritgh place where you can work. You also abused th whole Lombard community as reported at your user page.--clamengh 13:39, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You're right. Provided that you are the only Lombard community. And please, don't strike everything. It's not a nice thing. --Remulazz 13:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC) PS This may be considered as vandalism.

Absolute anti-italian attitude

I really don't know why, but on Lombard wikipedia speaking Italian is strongly deprecated. Even if a user can only speak Italian, he/she is strongly invited to translate his/her post. This doesn't sound very wiki to me. Remember that every native Lombard speaker can speak Italian. Owing to the absence of a real community, this form of racism has penetrated well deep into lmo.wiki.

It is a quite curious thing, given that Clamengh and 10caart both stated that they were born in Italy. Moreover, Clamengh had once a dialogue in a perfect standard Italian at the friulian wikipedia ([5]). Here he apologize to write in Italian, before writing in Italian. Maybe he forgot the language? No... nobody can wholly forget a language... it's like riding a bycicle, once you learned, you can not forget. That's greater than my understanding capability.

Please prove this.--clamengh 13:39, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

fro, mariorix cjau a tu"cj ma è mai possibile non capire???macché attitudine antitaliana, in quanti chat, gruppi e forum ho partecipato in cui si invita a scrivere o ciattare nella lingua di riferimento. Provatevi a scivere in esperanto nel sito in ido, o usaare un'antra lingua nelle chat esperantiste. Ma non sono posizioni anti o pro, sono l'invito a sfruttare le poche occasioni offerte dal web. chiaro,quello che vedo qui è un atteggiamento di disamore per le lingue, per i popoli, per la creatività e tutto ciò è fatto da nazionalisti italiani e difeso persino da meravigliose persone scandinave. a me non stanno in antipatia gl'italiani, anzi amo ogni angolo d'Italia, ma mi stanno sulle cose i nazionalisti arroganti che qui ci sguazzano.Sono cose che ho già vissuto in Russia e in Spagna contro i popoli minori. Ho dovuto difendere asturiani e aragonesi dagli ipernazionalisti catalani (nonostante che stavo dando la vita per la loro terra). Idem contro i nazionalisti occitani (di Fontan) contro i piemontesi. Dei turchi contro gli armeni, di bulgari contro i turchi, ecc Che cosa devo dire degli italiano di destra e di sinistra contro i Rom solo perché Rom, e nessuno dice niente.Altro che italiani brava gente, per me sono mignottoni come tutti gli altri popoli del mondo e si vede in quella porcheria che sto subendo come Lombardo. (come insubro e come orobico). Quello che state facendo a Clamengh, e spettegolando su ogni parola detta o non detta sul sito friulano sa da chiacchiera di portineria. non da una cosa seria come wiki.Scusarsi perché si deve scrivere in una lingua piutosto che un'altra, l'ho fatto anch'io tantissime volte. Tante volte non ho voluto usare l'italiano,l'inglese (come in questa occasione) per polemica, per provocazione, e allora?Nel mio passato libertario, non mi si dica che sono razzista. E' piuttosto razzista che dice che la mia etnia non esiste. Lo farei per qualsiasi etnia. Così facendo state minando l'esistenza di tutte le lingue ed etnie d'Italia, dal Piemonte alla Sicilia.Che hanno gli stessi problemi (perché tutto il mondo ha gli stessi problemi). Già anche il piemontese ha varietà emolto divergenti. La lingua dell'autore del Fu Mattia Pascal era la linga di Girgenti/Agrigento e ne ha persino scritto una tesi. Diversa evidentemente dalla lingua siciliana. E allora?? Scagliarsi contro il sito Siciliano? Ma veramente, state scherzando?

Small size

I am well aware that Lombard wikipedia has now more than 100.000 articles, but I must point out that the great majority are only nearly empty, bot generated stubs (check out the Depth value on our list_of_Wikipedias).

lmo.wiki had some period of dramatic boom, like a volcano, during the last spring, summer, and eventually this November, when the total number of articles grew from some thousand to twenty, thirty, fifty, eighty and eventually one hundred thousand. After this, no signs of life different from some interwiki bot.

So, IMHO, very few real damage will come from a closure.

I apologize for mistakes, but I am only en-2. For any communication, please contact me here. Thank you, --Remulazz 16:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Close

Close I have been living in Lombardy, in Milan, for nearly 40 years: I assure you that a unique language called "Lombard" do not exist. Maybe we can start a milanese or bergamasco wikipedia. --DracoRoboter 17:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The question is settled by ISO: 639-3 lmo is for LOMBARD LANGUAGE--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

E se io (in quanto lombardo, per quanto acquisito) me ne fregassi dell'ISO? E sopratutto mi spieghi perché gran parte dei milanesi madre lingua che conosco non capiscono il bergamasco? (o meglio lo capiscono quanto capiscono lo spagnolo) In novecento di Bertolucci la cosa è spiegata benissimo. --DracoRoboter 16:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

come ho già detto, i miei nonni di Inzago e i miei attuali parenti pensano che al di là dell'Adda si parli un'altra lingua diversa come il piemontese sta all'insubro, al di là del Sesia. Ma cosa vuol dire. è chiaro che tra orobico, insubro e piemontese d'è un legame culturale, storico e una continuità geografica. Se si vuole cercare di unificare queste lingue così come il limusino e il provenzale. cosa ci sarebbe di così negativo? Sai come è nata la lingua unificata Aragonese? (divisa tra influenze castigliane, catalane e guascone). Scegliendo i vocaboli più divergenti delle ultime due lingue e cercando di non attingere al castigliano. Ebbene ora questa cervellotica koinai viene scritta e parlata. Giornaletti (la Fuella ad es.9 si trova anche nelle edicole di Saragozza!. Ma forse era meglio non dirlo. Poi vi spiegherò come si sono formate lingue come l'Euska batua, così non dormirete di notte. Provate a toccare il sito basco...E l'Azteco (il nahuatl) guardate i neologismi utilizzati nel vocabolario online. La vostra è una battaglia che in Spagna verrebbe presa come nazionalista. el mariorix

Wikipedia non inventa, e non fa battaglie politiche (non in questo senso almeno, in altri sensi sì ma questo discorso ci porterebbe fuori tema) quindi lo so anch'io, pur non essendo un esperto, che tutte le lingue sono in qualche modo un'invenzione. Il punto è wikipedia interviene solo dopo che l'invenzione sia stata fatta. (anche se è dubbio ci riesca: ad esempio "wikificare" probabilmente diventerà prima o poi una parola da dizionario italiano). --DracoRoboter 01:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Lombard is an endangered language. In a wiki spirit, using a neologism to write an article because the original word is lost or never existed may invite someone else's intervention to come up with the correct word. I had this problem with the Lmo article for "tongue-twister". I'm a Lombard, although I can't claim I'm a native speaker of Insubrian or Pavese - but I neither knew the word nor could find it on my dictionaries. Should I have given up? Why? ... There is a Latin Wikipedia although few people speak Latin nowadays. A Wikipedia in a dead language, if Lombard were deemed to be one such, would then not be unprecedented anyhow. Pan Brerus (talk) 21:50, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

1. Strongly support to close I was born in Lombardy (close to Milan) and I work in Bergamo. AFAIK, such a language doesn't exist. Besides, lmo.wiki is deeply involved in politic (they're exploiting an encyclopedia to spread separatist ideas). Jollyroger 19:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

   Please prepare to prove your absurd accusations.--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

2. Strongly support to close I live in Tessin but this Wikipedia is not workable. --Ilario 19:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

   No motivations at all: simple racism--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   For people from Tessin is not workable, I use the dialect of Tessin not other one because I don't know other dialect, is not a position of racism. IMHO this is not my Wikipedia. --Ilario 15:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   I also use a variety of 'koiné ticinesa' and I am not confortable with some of the orthographic or lexical solution drawing towards Catalonia, if you see what I mean. -- Although Catalan and Lombard are closer related than Italian and Lombard or Italian and Catalan, for centuries there has benn little cultural contact between the two areas and the languages have evolved their own ways, also ortographically. I have thought many times of the possibility of having a Ticinese Wikipedia instead of a Lombard Wikipedia: this would solve many problems (for example the East-West issue). The standard forms used could be those of the koiné (i.e. the lemmata in the LSI published by CDE in Bellinzona). But is it natural to exclude some varieties on the Italian side of the border that are so close to the koiné of Tessin? Think creatively, reform the Lombard Wikipedia, if necessary even change its name and linguistic content, but don't close it!--Kemmótar 12:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

3. Close I was born in Somma Lombardo (nice, isn't it?) and graduated at the University of Insubria but I would not dare write a single word in a language that I can't recognise as my motherlanguage: that Koinè is not spoken in my county. --Xaura 19:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

   You are welcome to contribute in your dialect, AS EXPLICITELY STATED EVERYWHERE IN LOMBARD WIKIPEDIA. Again racism.

   Racism from lombard people (like me and xaura) to them-self? Are you kiddin' us or what? --DracoRoboter 11:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

4. Close. From "request for new languages" (deleted page), 2 years ago: "[..] even though SIL, ISO and someone else states that Lombard is a language, I, living in Lombardia!, know very well that Lombard doesn't exist; we've Milanese in Milan, Bresciano in Brescia and so on, but not a unique language. So please stop with this nonsense projects! Frieda 10:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC) ". I didn't change my mind. Frieda 19:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

   The question is settled by ISO: 639-3 lmo is for LOMBARD LANGUAGE--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Sì? Vorrei una grammatica in lombardo da consultare per controllare quello che scrivete e la corretta sintassi, me la sai indicare? Dimenticavo: se la lingua esiste, come asserisce l'ISO, perché l'enciclopedia è scritta in due lingue diverse? Frieda 14:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   If you are genuinely interested, you can use these:

   Lurà, F. 1987, Il dialetto del mendrisiotto, Mendrisio-Chiasso, Ediz. Unione di Banche Svizzere

   Nicoli, F. 1983, Grammatica Milanese, Busto Arsizio, Bramante Editori

   They are a bit difficult to find, but large libraries hould have them.

   They describe specific Western varieties, but practically very close to the Western koiné. In particulr, the first one describes varieties very close to the koiné used in Ticino--Kemmótar 21:26, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Uè, barlafus, el mendriot l'é propi istess del milanes... ma di no stupidat. Are grammar of milanese and mendrisiotto not Lombard grammar, please be fair. --DracoRoboter 21:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

5. Close I've always lived in Lombardy (near Monza) and this people, instead of writing an encyclopedia, seem to use lmo.wiki as a stage to spread their political ideas. Ideas that are common in this area (but does not represent the majority of the people, anyway). However, I think that lmo.wiki is trying to spread this message: if this ideas are supported by a Wikipedia, they should be supported by everybody. Really far from any Wikimedia vision. --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 19:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

   Prepare to prove your absurde accusations.--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   I said seem. Anyway, things like

   The idea of 'national territory' is debatable, as it implies that Italy be considered a 'nation'. Italy is surely a sovereign state, but whether it should be considered also a nation or not is a completely different matter. (found here)

   strengthen my opinion. --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 09:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   I don't think that statement should be understood as sympathising with Lega Nord or something like that, because it was not even written by an Italian or by somebody living in Italy.--Siri68 01:36, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

6. support for closure, looks like the only reason that keeps running this Wikipedia is to pursue a precise political agenda. --Brownout^(msg) 19:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
7. Close - the mentioned behaviours are really heavy and this suggests at least a complete reset of the lmo.wiki. I think Wikimedia projects must not be stumentalized by anyone or used to create some kind of new language (no original research please)! --Marcok 19:36, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

   Prepare to prove your absurde accusations about politics. Nobody creates anything, as everyboduìy can simply check directly. Everyone writes in its own dialect, including koinés, if already existing and documented.

8. Strongly support (agree with people in this section). --Fabexplosive The archive man 19:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
9. Support I was born and still live in Somma Lombardo and the dialect here is very used, especially Milanese. "Lombard" does not exist since in this county there are lot of dialects different for pronunciation or common words. I agree with DracoRoboter to start a 'milanese' or someone else related to "lombard dialects" that they will have more sense than "Lombard". HelLViS69 20:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
10. Support. Remulazz's report is really shocking. They can create a Wiki and do what they want with it, but not with Wikipedia...--Jaqen 20:08, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

    The question is settled by ISO: 639-3 LMO is for LOMBARD LANGUAGE.--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

11. support per Remulazz --.snoopy. AKA dario vet · (talk) 20:14, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

    Close - there may be a small bit of useful content, but most of it is the show of a small minority of people who try to create a Lombard language from scratch. I'm from Bergamo, but Eigua is not bergamasco at all. Cruccone 20:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)Striking my vote, things are moving and lmo.wiki deserves a chance --Cruccone 12:53, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

    Check Tiraboschi's dictionary. YOU make original research. Ask also 10caart, whi is mother tongue.--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    On this dictionary ater is translated as aqua (most common form) or àigua. here again you can find aqua as word for water. Eigua is Ligurian, not Bergamasch. Sorry I haven't got Tiraboschi hereCruccone 22:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

12. Close. Quote Remulazz.--Senpai 20:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
13. Close In order to support their geopolitical vision they have narrowed the boundaries of the territory in which the Lombard dialect is spoken to make them coincide with Lombardy --Tanarus 20:33, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

    Prepare to prove this accusation and to stand in front of an arbitration commitee. This is simply false--clamengh 14:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    clamengh le minacce falle sulla wiki lombrada please. Chissa perchè nella stessa il trentino non vien incluso nella definizione di lingua lombarda? --Tanarus 19:41, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

14. Close. lom.wiki is a mountain of waste.. --EdoM 20:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
15. Close it please. It's all true. --Cotton 20:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
16. Close Quote Remulazz...azz...azz. :P --DarkAp89 20:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
17. Close I lived in Milan, Como and Varese in several different periods of my life. I am not a Lombard native speaker, but I easily recognised some differences in languages and terms. I was able to retrieve some common words and rules (those cities are far less than 100 km each other), but common words I found, seem very different from ones I saw on present day Lombard wiki.--EH101 21:17, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
18. Close, obviously. --Remulazz 21:40, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
19. Close for all the reasons well reported by Remulazz. --Paginazero - Ø 21:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC) (born 40+ years ago and living in Lombardy since then)
20. Close I agree with Remulazz. --Archenzo 22:15, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
21. Close if WMF aims to host language-based, collaborative projects only. Please see the site's bilingual home page, alternating daily (click on Lumbaart Ucidentaal / Lombart Oriental for a complete skin change), the bilingual sitenotice and this bug request about duplicating the Portal (an possibly also the Category) namespace. Those are clear statements that lmo.wiki is hosting content in (at least) two fundamentally different, and incompatible languages. Also, this bug request gives some rather scary hints about the largely automated process that created the site as it is now. --Lp 23:08, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
22. Close, repeated attempts to instrumentally use this project for political (separatist) purposes; and, at a formal-technical level, I wholly agree with Lp about his remarks --Gianfranco 23:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
23. Close, do not let them use Wikimedia resources for their own personal project. Ary29 07:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
24. Close - as per Remulazz...--Cometstyles 13:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
25. Close. This wikipedia is a shame. Wiki is cooperation, this one is a despotic oligarchy. Jalo 15:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
26. Close. I entirely quote Lp and Yekrats analysis. --Pap3rinik 16:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
27. Close. --Leoman3000 16:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
28. Close. I can't understand the sense of lmo.wikipedia. Thousands of stubs of municipalities, like Volapuk Wikipedia... What a lombard Wikipedia that hasn't got the article of Lombardy! Rastrojo 16:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    A very good point, but still not a viable reason for closing the Lmo.Wikipedia project!--Kemmótar 18:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    The fact that Lombard does not exist, and lmo.wiki requires at least two main pages, is a viable reason? --Remulazz 20:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

29. Close I think that lmo.wikipedia isn't a real wikipedia because all it's a stubs of municipalities or numbers for example 12.040.000. And I think, do we want this? --Carles 16:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
30. Close - as per Remulazz and Lp. Jacopo 17:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
31. Close --Giovanni 17:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
32. Strongly support to close I have relatives in Lombardy. I agree with DracoRoboter. --valepert 18:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
33. Close --Olando 18:19, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
34. Please, close that disgrace: it is simply absurd that a language based project is written by bots, with a declared goal to build an encyclopedia in many different dialects, passing this off as a unified lombard language. The project itself (and Clamengh above) state that there is no lombard language. Moreover, despite its 100 000+ entries, there are only a few evidences of human activity (most vandalisms and reverts). Is this what we have in our mind? Wikis without community? Wikis written by bots? Wikis based on a original languages, built arbitrarly? If the proposal were made today, it would be rejected with a barrel of laughs. --Tooby 17:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    BTW, I didn't know that United States, in lombard language, is lmo:United States... --Tooby 17:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    This morning, while the discussion was in progress, Clamengh's bot created hundreds of pages like this [6]. Is it a joke? --Cotton 20:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    No, it's lmo.wiki everyday life. --Tooby 20:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Two thousands of five-word-articles, written by a bot, in a language invented there ex-novo by the botmaster (Lombard souradialectal), using an ortography invented by the botmaster (Ortographa ORS) and still not published. Wow!!! lmo.wiki is better than hashish! And it's not illegal! --Remulazz 09:49, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    BTW, in a serious Wikipedia edition, an user uploading tens of thousands articles like those would be blocked for vandalism. On lmo.wiki, he administrate. --Remulazz 13:27, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    What a truth!! This is a heavy reason for close the Lombard Wikipedia. Rastrojo 19:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    This is not necessarily a heavy reason for closing the Lombard Wikipedia, but rather a heavy reason for a radical... hm, I would say perestrojka of the Lombard Wikipedia.--Kemmótar 23:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

35. Close I agree with Remulazz IPork 20:54, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
36. Close. Looking at the keepers' votes below, I noticed how few lmo.wikipedia users are defending this project. May I presume that such a lack of community is the best proof of Remulazz's statements? As a vec.wiki user I sense this difference: when a language is not easy to put into written form (there are still some problems about this on vec.wiki) first some form of community is needed, then there can be debate, search of consensus and so on. What is slowly moving vec.wikipedia to a solution has never occurred on lmo.wiki. - εΔω 21:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
    • P.S. As I wrote also in the first Proposal for closure, I want to clarify that Remulazz's proposal is completely different from Codice1000's one: detailed, meditated (it's no surprise for many people), supported by many other users. - εΔω 21:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
37. Close Quoting all the folks that preceded me. -- Sannita 22:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
38. Close --Bramfab 10:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC) I'm agree with all the previous, and I would like to tell briefly a personal experience. At begin of my approach with wiki I was glad to sign myself also in the so called Lombard wiki, after when I realise that the language used was not matching at all what I was used to hear from my grandparents so I pratically left the project. During the August '07 wikipedians meeting in Milano Remulazz told me that I had been blocked in Lombard wiki as suckpuppet of Code1000 (I guess as retalation because I supported and eventually I'll support the proposal of Codice1000 for an insubrian wiki just to have an undestandable wiki to people used to milanes dialect)! I didn't take care of that because I'd already left that version of wiki project, but this is a confirmation of a "very strange" behaviour of "lumbaart" management.
39. Close I completely agree with what Remulazz stated in his analisys (imho that wiki seems like something written in gramelot). --kiado 12:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
40. Close the language used on lmo wiki has nothing to do with what I hear from my father, grandparents, relatives and with that spoken from all previous generations of my "original milanese" family... --Civvi 14:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
41. Close - I don't know Lumbaart language, but I guess this is not Lumbaart. Please note that the "author" of this kind of "articles" is Blamengh (clamengh's bot), the same of the latest 5000 English or empty pages: trashpedia? --Jhc 15:01, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
42. Close, quoting Remulazz and Lp. KS1975 19:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    00:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)Mariorix°–00:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)Mariorix badly formatted vote.

    Close, quoting Civvi. I haven't looked at the political usage of the lmo wiki, but I can speak from a linguistic point of view. This Votr podeis aidar Wikimedia a canbiar l mond sounds catalan, not Lombard! For example I'm from Milan and I would understand something like ti ta pudariat aiutà Wikimedia a cambià 'l mond. This is not about ortography, it's about lexicon and grammar! Same for 10.000 personnes ann jamò fait donations, where I would say 10.000 gent ann già faa una dunazziun. They are inventing a language. Bon Zeenie Bon Zeenie 08:11, 30 November 2007 (UTC) i'll abstain for now. Bon Zeenie 14:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

    I do agree with you (although I support keeping the lmo.wikipedia), and more than once in the past I have criticised those 'catalanising' tendencies, asking to replace those banners with more lombard ones. Once I had to read a banner carefully more than a couple of times before understanding what was actually meant.--Kemmótar 17:35, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

43. Close, see below --Snowdog 11:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
44. Close, quoting Remulazz and Lp.GJo 10:34, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
45. Close, non esiste una lingua lombarda... al massimo diversi dialetti... insomma non ha senso... --Torsolo 12:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
46. Close, "lombard language" do not exist... There are only milanese dialect, bergamasco dialect, bresciano dialect and so on--Castagna 16:10, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
47. Close Helios 20:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
48. Close. "Lombard language" does not exist. I live in Bergamo and I assure that the idea of a unique "Lombard" language is simply a 'fakeloric' phenomenon. Statements about the existence of a single language are, at least in Italy, related to political propaganda spread by movements such as the Northern League. I don't know the strange reasons why Catalan people should oppose the closure of this project, but it doesn't matter. I've just read the reasons written below. --Nyo 20:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

    I don't know very much about Italian politics and I am not even an Italian citizen, but I am afraid the Lombard League / Northern League has done a lot of damage to the cause of Lombard varieties. Nevertheless, I believe that the days are gone when those speaking in favour of the preservation of Lombard varieties were implicitly identified as 'leghisti'. Besides, the Northern League has pursued the (utopic) idea of a Padanian rather then a Lombard language!--Kemmótar 23:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

49. This needs to be closed before it damages the Foundation. John Reaves (talk) 21:26, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

    Why closed and not radically reformed? Why can't the speakers of some Lombard variety have the right to have their Wikipedia -- provided it is a serious project? Lombard is after all rated as an endangered language even by UNESCO! I do agree that lots of things should be changed in the Lombard Wikipedia, but I don't believe closing it is the right way to go.--Kemmótar 23:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

    Do you really believe a radical reformation is possible? Wikipedia isn't UNESCO and isn't here to preserve ( or "conserve" if you wish) every endangered language. And wait a minute, Ethnoloque says there are millions of speakers and SIL says nothing about it (not that I place much merit in them). Where does UNESCO document Lombard? I can't find anything. John Reaves (talk) 22:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

50. Close ("l'è mej sarà sù bottega", told in Milanese, not in the so-called, not-existing "lombard"). --Vermondo 23:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
51. Strong Support to Closing -- I lived for my first twenty years of life in Lombardia, and me and my family are of lombardian descent. "Lombardic languages" are many, and very different; that wiki is un-useful and conceptually wrong (and, as other users, I fear the spoilering of this project for political separatist purposes - in Lombardia is very active a separatist political force, that - in theory - could be very interested in using/"hijacking" this project for their own "political-cultural" purposes). Veneziano 13:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
52. Close -- Lombard is a language family, not a single language, like Akan. MFG 14:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    are you sure? I think that you don't have any idea concerning both, Akan and Lombard- Mariorix

    So are Italian, German, Swiss German, Swedish, Norwegian, etc. Close them too, then? -- Olve 14:56, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    There is not a unique wikipedia (neolatin? indoeuropean? why not...) when you could write in both those languages. Instead there are dozen of wikipedias where you can write in those languages. I think it's not a complex concept... maybe I better explain it in italian :( DracoRoboter 15:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    That is not correct, actually: The Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia included articles in both Bokmål and Nynorsk for a long time before the Nynorsk contents were moved to a separate Wikipedia. In the Nynorsk Wikipedia, there is a (small) separate section for the written language Høgnorsk. That a Lombardian Wikipedia may include language forms now that may ending up being split in separate projects later is therefore not unique, and also not necessarily at all a bad thing. -- Olve

    Olve, though there are regional influences on colloquially spoken Italian, they are kept out of written Italian. So, it is a single language for the purpose of writing a wikipedia. Likewise, nobody in their right minds would write a de.wiki article in Bavarian. Bon Zeenie 09:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

    Italian is a language with a very strong written tradition and relatively little room for variation within the written language. Norwegian is a language with a lot of variation in both the spoken and written varieties; even within each of the two officially recognised written languages, there is a lot of variation. There is a strong written tradition in both these varieties as well as in, in practice, dozens of other language varieties. The German situation is similar to the Italian one, including the contemporary branching-off of language forms that are different enough from the written tradition that they are conceived by at least some speakers not to be sufficiently reflected in it. Lombard is clearly different from Italian and German here; but it has some striking parallel traits with Norwegian in its variety. -- Olve 13:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian have varieties, too. And English has different spellings! This is not a valid argument for terminating a Wiki! Pan Brerus (talk) 21:53, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

1. Close --Kronin▄¦▀ 15:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
2. Close There's no such thing as Lombard! Snowolf 01:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh good. E alora in che lengoa sont adree a ditt de andà a dà via el pussee bon di articiocch? Pan Brerus (talk) 21:55, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

1. Close or split - The fact that Lombard is not a language is quite important, not to mention the inventing of things (e.g., lexicography ortography). I see many Lombards supporting the closure with this very good reasoning in mind. The only thing I currently see in the dissenters is a lot of "they're fascists" arguments (e.g., en:Godwin's law) or arguments without any support (e.g., en:WP:ILIKEIT); not to mention, of course, the single-purpose-accounts. Patstuart 08:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

   Please, could you clarify what you mean by 'lexicography' in this context?--Kemmótar 12:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

   Agree with Kemmótar: This sentence is not easy to understand for those of us who happen to have university training in linguistics and lexicography... -- Olve 13:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

   Agree with Kemmótar: This sentence is not easy to understand for those of us who happen to have university training in linguistics and lexicography... -- Olve 13:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

   Aggiungo, in italiano, che a me invece è molto chiaro quello che intende. Forse perché questa è wikipedia, ed è fatta da persone che non necessariamente debbono avere un "university trainig" specifico. Se volete "l'accademia della crusca" sarebbe meglio vi spostaste su qualche altro progetto. --DracoRoboter 14:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

   I misspoke; I meant ortography. Patstuart 07:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

   Aha! Now I get your point. Well, the whole issue of orthography is rather complicate, and I am well aware that there is no optimal solution. All possible solutions are in some way or another suboptimal (i.e., something has to be sacrified). I respect all serious proposals (i.e. based on reflection and knowledge of the matter one is dealing with) to solve this problem -- or at least some aspect of it --, even if I do not agree. After thinking, learning more about different Lombard varieties, and evaluating this issue for years, I came to a certain conclusion and devised a phonetically based system that I mean could work. This system is just an improvement of the one adopted by CDE in Bellinzona, which again is rooted in the Milanese tradition. Clamengh has made a completely different proposal, based on etymology (=the study of the history of words). I deeply respect his proposal, altough I do not think it could work in practice (incidentally, I do not agree with the introduction of Catalan solutions, as they are completely foreign to Lombard culture (which is a synthetic way to say: to the cultural traditions of Brescia, Bergamo, Milan, Como, the Sottoceneri, the Sopraceneri, the Grisons, the Valchiavenna and Valtellina, etc. etc. etc. etc.)).--Kemmótar 20:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

2. Close or split. It's unfortunate that the people opposing this closure are using generic arguments that don't apply to this situation. We're not destroying your dialect, it just doesn't make sense to have an edition in a language family that does not include a standardized, mutually intelligble lexicon. Whether the different dialects warrant their own editions would need to be studied further to see if appropriate reliable sources support it. - Taxman 19:55, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

   Although there is no strict standard, there is at least some tacit standard about what cannot be done. We can discuss whether [ø] should be written 'oeu' or 'ö', but almostb everybody agrees that a word-final [k] should be written 'ch', and that 'ch' should never be pronounced [tS] as in English... I believe that there is actually much more 'tacit' standardisation than people think...--Kemmótar 20:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

3. Close: Actually there is nothing wrong inventing your own language, make it popular, and then start a Wikipedia in your own language. But it seems that the 2 admins were misusing the opportunity of starting a Lombard Wikipedia and invent their own Lombard. Furthermore, recently when I translate the article on the language from English to Malay, I've found that there are West and East, and the difference seems obvious. So at least there should be separated Wikipedias for them.
   

   Furthermore, just now I've found that 2 of the bot created articles have the same content! What's the use!? That is really a trashpedia! Wow, bot creating articles, that's amazing! I wonder how could a robot write! That's not logic. The bots were merely used to create a false illusion that "the Lombard Wikipedia is good because it has a lot of articles". Why must there be so many empty useless pages? Just to put the Wikipedia in high position?
   

   Last time I really wonder how come such a Wikipedia that has only 2 admins can have 5 figures of articles. Now I understand! No wonder a few months ago it was still having less articles than the Malay Wikipedia, and now it has more than 100000! Merely using those s***s (sorry for this word) to raise it so high up... That's patent vanity! --King Edmund of the Woods 18:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

4. Close Invented language, invented orthography, dictatorship. I would have many things to say, but I've finished words. I've tried to dialogue, to persuade, to work actively (trying to neglect misunderstandings), to inform Wikimedia, to fight against the manipulation also practised on Italian and English wikipedias: I'm content somebody managed to do something. I hope in well. Codice1000 13:56, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
5. Close: --Accurimbono 13:30, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
6. Close No need to waste Wikipedia resources for this Wikipedia. No ISO code.--Certh 21:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
7. Close, the whole situation is a farce and the admins on Lombard wiki should be ashamed of themselves for allowing it to get to this state. If kept, it needs to have all of the junk swept out (I see a lot of that is being done), and the admins closely supervised to keep this from happening once more. Lankiveil 12:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC).
8. Close. Waste of time. --Node ue 04:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
9. Close. No reason to use a Wikipedia for a language family, where most of the pages are bot-created. Ral315 (talk) 17:04, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Keep

The formatting had been disrupted. Reformatted by --Kemmótar 00:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC) -- back to the previous subdivision with a 'Keep' section

1. Keep I don't see reasons to close this wikipedia. A language is a language even if is spoken from one people only. Sorry for my bad English.--79.4.185.88 00:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC) I understand the previous comment as a 'Keep', and I have added Keep at the beginning --Kemmótar 00:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
2. Keep The proposal of closing this wikipedia comments itself. However, being civic minded requires to register and vote pro keeping. I suggest the reading of Marx' "The Capital": there are plenty of issues related to the kind of oppression the proponents are trying to put in place. I would like to say that this proposal is complete crap, but fairness prevents me to do that.--Vladimir1 10:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC) PS I noted that the contributions are not time-ordered: feel free to move this one if needed.
3. Keep I vote in favour of keeping the Lombard Wikipedia. It is an already existing project, and if you close it, there will be little chance to re-start it from scratch. The fact that there already is a dedicated team of people (however small, it can be integrated and grow later on) seems to me an asset difficult to reconstruct. We should above all, if we are to do something for our minoritized languages, try not to destroy what we already have. I'd also like to say that I don't agree with some specific reasons that have been put forward in favour of cancellation of the Lombard Wikipedia. Lombardizing modern words like "sociology" is not at all inventing, it is the only way we have to follow the fast progress of knowledge, and actually native speakers do it. What we should fight against is not native speakers' creativity and ability to adapt to changing times, but their tendency to use Italian words instead of already existing Lombard words. So much for that. As far as the lack of standard is concerned, this did not prevent a whole lot of other languages to be accepted. Everyone should make a contribution, using their personal variety and declaring which one it is.
4. Keep Good afternoon, 10caart warned me about the existence of this proposal. On the one hand, I no longer take part in wikimedia projects (no spare time); on the other, I make two exceptions, with pleasure:

   I plan to complete a translation in Bergamasque for Lombard wikipedia

   I vote against this proposal, that cannot be accepted inasmuch based on calumniations, of course unproved.

   Every dialect and every orthography since has been welcome at Lombard wikipedia. Etymological ones are as well: the latter have the obvious advantage of writing different dialects the same way (but they are read differently; but eventually, wikipedia is a written encyclopaedia). There's plenty of reading which could be suggested to those willing to get documented (but the proponents do not seem willing). One among all: G.Hull, The linguistic unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia.

   I too will conclude with a personal note: probably Remulazz' contributions are not fascist: they rather seem only half-fascist. In my view, the political misuse of wikimedia resource is completely up to the proponents. Thank you--OlBergomi 15:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

   What is half-fascist? --82.48.124.183 18:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC) Ops. --Remulazz 18:21, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

5. Keep The only people making (at pub-like level) original research are the proponents, while talking about the absence of a Lombard language. This question is settled by ISO, in turn relying on plenty of academic sources (see e.g. the English article about the Lombard language). One of the above user isn't even able to say "water" in its own language! Now I am going to make up a synthesis of recent contributions (by me and by my Lombard friends) about this problem:

   The words of these users seem to show that they do not know very well what a language is, nor do they seem to have the faintest idea of the notion of mutual intelligibility. It is not my job to teach this to them, but I can suggest an interesting reading:

   Komarova-Nyogi: Optimising the mutual intelligibility of linguistic agents in a shared world, AI-154,2004, 1-42.

   As to Lombard language, an extended bibliography is provided at English wikipedia, at the end of the homonymous article.

   A further strong motivation is that the external judge of these kind of questions is ISO (compare Wikimedia's No original research policy): and the present ISO's subdivision of the Rhaeto-Cisalpine domain (see G.Hull: The linguistic unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, Sidney, 1982) into LIJ, PMS, LMO, ROH, LLD, VEC, FUR, EML is rather reasonable.

   The proponents seem to ignore that, while there's a linguistic border in the lowlands along the river Adda, western dialects continuosly turn into eastern ones through Valtellina in the Alps, with no precise border.

   All in all, the proponents seem dramatically unaware of their actions: of their own free will or not, they aim at destruction of Lombard tongue, this easily implying the impossibility of spreading knowledge in that language. This fact results in being contrary to the spirit of Wikimedia: Wikimedia projects are not about (conscious or unconcious) politics.

   There are also serious problems about two of the proponents: racist statements made by Codice1000 and Remulazz. The former, with the style everyone by now knows, abused, among others, people from Southern Italy (whom, I dare recall, the material richness of Lombardy is at least in part based, as a matter of fact, upon) calling them terrons within Lombard wikipedia: this seriously damaged the image itself of our community, which, in the spirit of ancient Lombardy, is strongly anti-racist. The latter, who rather seemed a civilized person, once upon a time surprisingly stated something like this: Nature made Bergamasque people different from us. (!!!)

   Summing up:

   There's no reason to breake a well running project;

   LMO.WP is another evidence of the fact that ISO classification is right (if needed: ISO is based in Switzerland!);

   Closing would diminish freedom of expression in any variety of Lombard language, this being contrary to the spirit of wikimedia projects, inasmuch as Lombard language is like any language;

   The proponents ignore (among other things, like respect) the global structure of Lombard tongue: transition between Eastern and Western Lombard is continuous through the Valtellina (Poschiavino is an almost perfect mix) and there are other types of central dialects like Cremonese and Mantuan. So, this request means:

   "Everybody stop speaking (let alone writing) Lombard and turn to another language";

   "If you insist in speaking or writing Lombard, please, this is a joke for amusing serious people".

   It is clear that this is not what Wikimedia projects are about. I dare saying that this is not a completely bona fide request.

   The above users look like children whimming for breaking something. That's why these user should be told they are expected to contribute to LMO wikipedia if they are interested in (their dialect of) Lombard language. I warmly suggest this reading:

   Claude Hagège: Halte à la morte des langues.

   Finally, the above heavy accusation of separatism, must be proved (of course they couldn't) and not voted, unless this would be like a "vote" by Ku-Klux-Klan about coloured people. Regards, --10caart 14:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

   Omen, asen e porch
   se pesen dopo mort. --Codice1000 21:22, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

   You are the klan, obviously. 10caart, ma tu davvero pensi che qualcuno che ha scritto voci sulla wikipedia in lombardo usando la s per il plurale possa essere preso sul serio quando parla? Volevo farvi notare che fra le accuse che potete ancora rivolgerci manca solo quella di nazicomunismo alla Pol Pot. Potete provare, tentar non nuoce. Per quanto riguarda le prove, non replico perchè è troppo facile. Sai, mica che poi mi dicono che sono fascista. Potrei avermene a male. Confido che tu abbia capito il messaggio, anche se non parli l'italiano ma solo il bergamasco e il lombard souradialectal con il plurale con la s.--Remulazz 07:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

6. Keep It's pointless opposing on the base of content: that's a wiki, simply go and change contens. I think that this is a well driven project and will soon have its own community. Please don't forget that, according to recent studies on the matter the rate of analphabetism is 98 percent. This does not prevent the resting 2 percent to act in their own language. The question of dialect vs. language is easily established by any elementary manual of linguistics. I invite everybody to get documented. Finally, a personal note: my father escaped to fascist concentration camps by getting refugee in Switzerland: some of the opponents of our project really do make interventions whose tone recalls ancient kinds of prevarication. I hope that this political misuse of wikimedia resources is going to stop. Salutations, --Belinzona 15:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   The political misuse of Wikimedia resources is going to stop when you, 10caart and Clamengh stop creating a language and a way to write it for your purposes. And please, I am tired to be labeled as fascist. I'm not fascist, and I think you (and your dear friend Clamengh here below) don't even know who were fascist. A real fascist would have asked for the closure of every regional project. I took dozens of proves against lmo.wiki, and I'm just asking its closure. Just read my report, even if I am well sure you don't need to do it. --Remulazz 15:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

7. Oppose The whole above is fascist delirium. Those who spoke about separatis ideas in Lombard wikipedia should be able to stand in front of an arbitration commitee and prove there accusations. Otherwise they should be banned. The language-or-not issue is the usual unscientific junk. I recall that this is a matter stated by ISO 639-6 --213.140.11.135 13:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC) + Oppose The whole above is fascist delirium. Those who spoke about separatis ideas in Lombard wikipedia should be able to stand in front of an arbitration commitee and prove there accusations. Otherwise they should be banned. The language-or-not issue is the usual unscientific junk. I recall that this is a matter stated by ISO 639-6 --213.140.11.135 13:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC) That's me--clamengh 13:34, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   For the sake of clarity, if 213.140.11.135 is voting in favour of keeping the Lombard Wikipedia, he/she should use the appropriate template (Keep = 'keep the Lombard Wikipedia', Oppose = 'shut down the Lombard Wikipedia').--Kemmótar 23:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

   What? 213.140.11.135 was Clamengh himself! He told us just two lines before... --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 15:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

   Why two votes? --Remulazz 13:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   One vote, of course.--clamengh 13:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   The question language vs not language is stated by ISO: lmo is ths code for the Lombard language.

   Those who speak about political or separatist ideas should prepare to stand in front of an arbitration commitee and prove these accustations.

   The etymological orthography ORS is now published, so IT IS NOT ORIGINAL RESEARCH. --clamengh 14:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   I wold like to stress that my vote has been cancelled twice. Please check the log of this page. This vote looks like, to say at least, suspicious.--clamengh 14:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Are you sure? I deleted once, and restored three minutes after, when I realized my mistake. I apologized for this. However, your vote is well visible few rows above. --Remulazz 14:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Cancelling others' text? Bad attitude, like this or this or this case... Who was the first to strike others' text in this page? --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 15:35, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Could you please give some more info about this "etymological orthography ORS"? I cannot find anything but you. Thanks. Frieda 14:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Hello, thank you for your question. At the moment I can only send you a letter of acceptation by the review which will publish the article (it's copyrighted material). ORS means Ortographa de referença S. The only item to be explained is the capital letter S, referring to the etymological writing of -es for feminine plural. Please e-mail me if you are interested in the copy of the letter of acceptation, I will send you in a few day (I have to go back home to scan it). The article will appear in spring 2008. As you can see, we are people working hard and bona fide. Thank you and best regards,--213.140.11.135 16:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)--clamengh 16:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC) (not logged in, sorry)

   Does "etymological orthography ORS" refer to Lombard? ..it's a spanish editor, with a site in english, catalan and occitan. Am I wrong if I understand that it's an "opera prima"? Who is the author? May I see some bibliography? I'm not a linguist, I'm just a wikipedian. How can I trust this source? Frieda 16:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   It's suitable for the whole Cisalpine domain. Yes you are, it's the first part of a planned series of articles. The author is me. This kind of source (a scientific journal) is accepted by English wikipedia. But you are not forced to trust this source: you already came to Lombard wikipedia, so you can raise an issue like: Refuse or accept only this kind of orthography etc. (of course this is a Pandora vase, you know well).--clamengh 16:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   This article will appear in spring 2008 means only that this article has not yet been published. So, rebus sic stantibus, this is a original research. And when you stated ...The etymological orthography ORS is now published, so IT IS NOT ORIGINAL RESEARCH. you were saying a false thing.

   No lombard dialects have the feminine plural in es. Only western romance languages have. So, why should we apply this to a (not existing) different language?

   You wrote ... As you can see, we are people working hard and bona fide.... We? Who? I say you mean you are part of a group that want to invent an ortography, publish it and adopt it to write a language you invented, given that you have not yet answered the main question: why Lombard Wikipedia has two main pages? We are always talking about an original research.

   --Remulazz 16:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

8. Keep Keep the Lombard Wikipedia!!! Some good points have been made by those who want to close the Lombard Wikipeda.

   - The orthographic issue should be settled, and it is true that the Catalan and Occitan influences both in some orthographic solutions and in the lexicon sometimes are too strong. Such influences should be mitigated;

   - Sometimes new words are created, but this is a part of the normal process of corpus expansion.

   These and other issues should be discussed and settled within the Lombard Wikipedian community, but I see no reason to close the project because of this! --Kemmótar 17:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Kemmotar, you don't understand a thing. We are not discussing about a voice, but about a language used to write it. Such influences should be mitigated???? Mitigated??? One more proof, you're inventing a language. Kemmotar... Lombard does not exist. Simply. It is an invented language (this statement is proved by lot of link, some of which mentioned above), written in an ortography invented by Clamengh (...The author is me..., right above here), dulcis in fundo never published by anyone. Mitigating the influences? ...Sometimes new words are created...? ...process of corpus expansion...?. You admit it so easily... you are working for us. --Remulazz 17:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   I think the tone of this disussion is degenerating, thanks to Remulazz, but anyway: anyone who has taken a basic course in linguistics knows that words are created continuously, in every language!

   Just a quotation from Språknytt 4/2007 (the bulletin of the Norwegian Language Council (http://www.sprakrad.no), page 31: title of the recurring column: "Nyord" -- which in Norwegian means 'New words'. This means that, unlike Remulazz, the linguists working at the Norwegian Language Council are aware of the basic fact that new words enter a language all the time, and have decided to devote a column to this topic in each bulletin...--Kemmótar 21:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   By the way: I do not think that there is something we can call 'Lombard' as a single variety, i.e. in the way that we can write a single grammar of that language as we could write e.g. a grammar of the dialect of Livigno or Lugano... On the other hand, I believe speakers of Lombard varieties could possibly agree on an Eastern Lombard koiné and a Western Lombard koiné (the latter being, for all practical purposes, more or less the same as the so-called 'koiné ticinese). The Catalan-looking and Catalan-sounding language you are thinking of is, of course, a construction (a very interesting for a linguist like me, but not viable in 'real life' or as the standard for a Lombard Wikipedia). You can see here [7] an example of what I mean by "Western koiné" (as I am the author of this text...). I don't think it should look/sound so unfamiliar to you... although you and I would probably pronounce that text with minor differences.--Kemmótar 02:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

   Usually invented by a community not by one person. --DracoRoboter 22:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Yes, but not necessarily. There are many cases of words invented by a small community or a specific person (based on material already present in the language) and later accepted by the larger community. Finnish and Modern Hebrew have many examples. All the examples in the Norwegian article mentioned above are taken from specific authors/newspaper articles and even dated!--Kemmótar 12:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   Can you show a standard grammar of "lombard" (not milanese, nor mendriosotto nor tessin..), show me which state declare that exist a language known as "lombard". Show which community accepted lombard as standard language. Thank you bagai. --DracoRoboter 14:57, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   If somebody would like to invent a new langauge he can do that obviuosly, but not under the umbrella of wikipedia, which is developped not for personal research. Plus I would like to note that the agency creating the new words for Norwegians and similar is adding words to a completely established languages, not to a sort of patchwork plus invention plus automatic bot activity as done here.--Bramfab 15:07, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   Here in Norway we have two written Norwegian languages, and lots of dialects. Please, have a look at the Wiki about Ivar Aasen in the English Wikipedia.--Kemmótar 23:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

9. Keep (agree with people in this section). --Cedric31 17:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
10. Opened. The ISO 639-3 stated that Lombard is a language : http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=lmo.

    So Ethnologue : http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lmo.

    So UNESCO : http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html.

    -- Dragonòt 16:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    If lombard is a language, why lmo.wiki has two different versions? Lombart Oriental and Lumbaart Ucidentaal Frieda 16:29, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Of course is acceptable that two or more written norms cohexist. Nevertheless we have two distinct wikis: a bokmål wikipedia and a nynorsk wikipedia. Think about a single norwegian wiki with some articles written in bokmål, some written in nynorsk, and a lot of articles written in a mix of bokmål, nynosk, danish and icelandic, and yo get the same situation we have actually on lmo.wiki. --Snowdog 02:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

    Yes, exactly. And that is how the two Norwegian wikipedias started. Later, the Bokmål and Nynorsk versions split when the time was ready. The same will probably happen with the Lombardic one when it gets help to get through the initial quirks. -- Olve 15:04, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Dear Frieda, you should ask the question to the ISO, or to the UNESCO, or to Ethnologue. Thanks, -- Dragonòt 10:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    The main page has two versions for the sake of making up community: people could feel oppressed by one dialect rather than another being privileged and so forth. It's a rather common phenomenon in languages lacking an accepted koiné. (Consider Sardu, for instance). So: we encourage people to write in their dialect with the orthography they prefer. It's libertarian, isn't it? (BTW, LMO.WP is rather an anarchist base, purely by chance :-).

    The huge number of short articles has been made up with the same goal in mind. So if one doesn't like that: come to Lombard wikipedia, ask for an election, ask to ban Clamengh (I hope you won't), and so forth. Best regards,--clamengh 16:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Ovvero non esistendo una lingua lombarda hai cercato di far convivere le varie lingue che esistono in Lombardia, e dintorni, nella stessa wikipedia, poi l'hai riempita di spazzatura. Qualcuno qui sopra ha affermato che dovresti vergognarti, concordo completamente con lui. --DracoRoboter 16:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    You see, Frieda, here in Norway we have two different written languages: bokmål and nynorsk, and both are considered Norwegian (actually, historically speaking, the minority language (Nynorsk) is 'more Norwegian' than the majority language (Bokmål), evolved from Danish). In many newspapers you can find an article written in one language and one in the other. Some of our laws are written in one language, and some in the other. Children at school have to learn both (one of them as the main language, the other as the secondary langage). Students at university have the right to choose in which language to receive their examination papers and in which language to write their exam. Why couldn't two or more written norms cohexist also in the Lombard-speaking areas?--Kemmótar 02:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

    Norway is a state that decided to use both language. Sorry but for a simple-mided like me is not the same thing. DracoRoboter 10:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

    Do you mean that if a variety is not an official language in some part of the world, then it is not a language? Btw., Norway now has two official written langages, but before this the official language was Danish. Do you mean that Norwegian was born on the day Danish ceased to be the official language of the Norwegian administration?--Kemmótar 11:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

    (Stante che vorrei che tu mi citassi il punto preciso in cui ti avrei insultato) No, sto dicendo che è ha senso che uno stato, o comunque una entità pubblica, crei una lingua artificiale unificata sulla base delle diverse lingue esistenti sul suo territorio. Non ha invece senso che tale operazione venga portata avanti da un gruppo ristretto di persone sulla base di loro teorie. Wikipedia non è fatta da linguisti: se volete che si usi una lingua questa deve essere riconosciuta come tale da una comunità e non deve essere stata inventata da un gruppetto di persone. DracoRoboter 13:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

11. Keep I am shocked to see the claims that Lombard is not a language. Of course it is. It it is well acknowledged among linguists that the "dialects" of Northern Italy are separate languages, and that Italy is one of the richest countries in Europe in terms of linguistic diverslty (cf. Lori Repetti (ed.): Phonological Theory and the Dialects of Italy ISBN 90-272-3719-0). I should know, having used Lombard language data both in my phonology lectures at the university and while examening Master's degree students. There does however not exist any officially recognised orthography of Lombard, and so the language, as most languages of the world, is mainly found in its different oral varieties, just as was the case of Norwegian only 150 years ago. The completely normal situation for a language is exactly this: a bunch of oral varieties that can be grouped together, but that do not have a common orthography that has been approved by a government. Closing the Lombard Wikipedia would be just as justified as closing the Plattdüütsch or the Romani Wikipedias. It would be motivated by politics to a degree that would not be suitable for Wikipedia itself. Jea 18:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Jea, you should confirm your identity. If not, maybe your vote has to be invalidated. --Remulazz 19:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    I don't quite understand how to "confirm my identity". Should I tell you my name or something? Jea 21:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    No, just have a look here. --Remulazz 08:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    I can confirm Jea's identity.--Kemmótar 23:11, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

    Conservare (Please, help me with English) Salve, mi chiamo Giuseppe Verdi (sì, proprio come il noto musicista). Vorrei dire la mia, ma non so se è valida come voto, sono solo un lettore: la proposta di chiusura mi sembra il solito attacco fascista alla libertà di espressione. La wikipedia in Lombardo è certamente migliorabile, ma mi sembra ben impostata. Per converso, l'atteggiamento di coloro che qui ne propongono la chiusura ricorda proprio le squadracce del Farinacci. Vergogna. Il mio voto, se valido, è: mantenere ( Keep). -Giuseppe Verdi 19:06 - Milano 28 Novembre 2007

    The vote here above is not valid, because expressed by an IP. --Remulazz 18:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Is it possible to make a Check User operation about last posts by Jea and anonimous user signed by "Giuseppe Verdi" (He doesn't exist on it.wiki, neither in en.wiki)? Thank you. --Leoman3000 18:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Ai fini della votazione è inutile: vengono conteggiati solo i voti provenienti da utenti che sono attivi su qualche progetto wiki con il nome utente usato nella votazione. Ergo un IP è fuori. cfr. --Tooby 18:34, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Scrivo in italiano, così il nostro misterioso utente apparso solo adesso capisce. Non vedo attacchi fascisti, ma una normale richiesta di chiusura con una montagna di prove a favore. Le squadracce del Farinacci non sai probabilmente neanche cosa sono, oppure, se lo sai, vuol dire che non sai che cosa è wikipedia e come deve funzionare una sua qualunque edizione. Non mi sembra strano, dal momento che (a quanto sembra) sei comparso adesso. --Remulazz 18:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Hello again. Perhaps I should add that I do not speak Lombard (or Italian) myself, although I have been in the area as a tourist. :) I work at a university in Norway (but I post this from home). Jea 18:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

12. Lombard is a language as linguistic authorities state. The fact that its dialects have different orthographies is something relatively common in other languages and does not imply that those dialects are separated languages. Therefore, I think that the wiki should not be closed. However, it is true that the other accusations are strong enough to act in this wiki. Maybe the administrators that could have acted despotically should be temporary desysoped while a consensus from the community that really wants to improve this project is searched, both in which users are the most prepared to lead the project (I am not saying that the current sysops are not) and which orthographies have most literary tradition and should be used. In addition, I support the opinion that WMF should not maintain a wiki filled with completely useless bad translated bot stubs and I propose to delete them all (especially those crazy numbers). Maybe this means that most of lmo pages have to be deleted and that this wiki has to almost restart from zero, but the community has to understand that there is no "free knowledge" at all in this kind of work. --SMP (talk page) 18:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
13. Keep The ISO 639-3 stated that lmo is the official code for the Lombard language, as an existing language. It would be unfair to close Lombard Wikipedia project for this reason. I vote for maintaining it as it is. TXiKi 19:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Then you can answer. If Lombard is an existing language, why the main page is splitted in two? So far, no answer has come to this questions. --Remulazz 19:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    BTW Like Frieda asked above, I'm looking for a standard Lombard grammar. Can you tell me where I can find one? --Remulazz 19:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

14. Keep It is really disheartening to see this debate. You can't improve the lmo-wp project simply closing it... is this the way to behave? ... or it is a new wikimedia policy? I undoubtedly prefer 1000 vandalistic attaks to our wp project rather than this single attempt to silence the voice of a minority language. Feeling disgust --Flavi 19:34, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Yes, Flavi. It is a Wikimedia policy. You have to close a Wikipedia written in a invented language. You're right. --Remulazz 19:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    So... ISO 639-3 is an invented code? --Flavi 19:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    No, I don't think it's invented. Why did you split in two your main page, if Lombard is a unique language? Why did Clamengh, Belinzona and 10caart say they want to study a Koiné lumbarda? Why did Clamengh try to create two separate namespaces for the same thing? It's quite strange, for a Wikipedia written in a unique language.

    Do you know Akan? ISO 639-3 code is ak. Akan wikipedia has been closed with the motivation ...is now considered a family of languages.... How can you explain this fact? I wrote the link in the report I put above. --Remulazz 19:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    The wiki itself states that lmo.wiki is written in many dialects. --Tooby 20:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    So is the Alemannic Wikipedia. Should we shut down that one, too?--84.48.63.172 20:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    I understand that the very exixtence of a Lombard Wikipedia is annoying for certain people, probably mostly for political reasons. I guess this is the real reason of this whole debate.

    - if the problem lies in the administrators, they can be changed;

    - if the many different dialects are a problem (actually I view it as an implicit richness and even a strength), then the articles cound be rewritten in a more standardised variety with a long tradition (e.g., Milanese);

    - if the Eastern/Western issue is a problem, then splitting the Lombard Wikipedia into an Eastern and a Western Lombard Wikipedia could be considered.

    Do not misunderstand me: I am not advocating the idea of converting into one variety or splitting into two projects (I would rather support the idea of restructuring, cleaning and improving the exixting project). I am merely pointing out that, before considering shutting down the Lombard Wikipedia altogether, there are other ways to solve the issues some people feel unconfortable with.--Kemmótar 21:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Interesting, this thing about Akan. I have a few Akan-speaking students every year, and one of them is writing a term-paper on "Vowel harmony in Akan". While my students clearly consider Akan to be one language, they also make a distinction between Fante, Asante and Akuapem. Also, the standard Akan orthography is relatively new, so it's strange to read that Akan "is now" considered a family of languages. I would rather say that Fante, Asante and Akuapem "are now" considered one language, as well as separate languages. This only illustrates the fact that the distinction between language and dialect (in the sense of "linguistic variety", whether there is an orthography or not) is not always clear-cut. Still, Norwegian and Swedish are considered separate languages, even though they are closer to eachother than Lombard and Italian are. On the other hand, people from Voss, Oslo and Setesdal are all supposed to speak Norwegian, but they do not always understand eachother. Hm, perhaps we should delete the Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, as Norwegian Bokmål is historically only a reformed version of Danish orthography. :) Jea 21:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    ...or maybe merge the Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia with the Danish Wikipedia ;) --Kemmótar 21:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

15. Keep Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, only the own speakers of a language can delete it. Pérez 20:39, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    No comprendo como unos cuantos usuarios de Wikipedia pueden hacer un diccinario que supuestamente contiene 100.000 artículos en una lengua que "no existe", yo más bien diria que sí existe, y además está bien viva. Pérez 20:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Well, if they are things like lmo:Neath Port Talbot it's not difficult to have 100.000 articles. You don't even need a language! :-) Note: it was created by Blamengh, Clamengh's bot.. --Jaqen 02:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

16. Keep As an ISO-3 language, it is as suitable to own a wikipedia as English, French or Italian. Many languages have dialects, and that does not make them worse languages. I vote for keeping it--Janfri 20:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
17. KeepI am not neither a Lombard speaker nor an Italian speaker, so I do not know if Lombard has been invented by somebody, but... If a unique language should have only one main page in the Wikipedia, why English has two Wikipedias, English and Simple English (not just two main pages)? If an invented language does not deserve its own Wikipedia, why Interlingua and Klingon have both a Wikipedia? This proposal sounds ridiculous. I dont't know if people in favour of Lombard Wikipedia have any political reason to keep it, but I can see in this discussion that people against Lombard Wikipedia have very sound political reasons to shut it down. Assar 21:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    Interlingua wasn't invented by ia.wiki's users... Anyway, I'm sorry but your vote is not valid. --Jaqen 02:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Assar, I wrote above I started my work on a Wikimedia project right on lmo.wiki. Some dozens of the only good articles there were written by me. In my own dialect (Brianzöö). NOT in lombard, given that it does not exist. So, how can you say this proposal has political reason? --Remulazz 08:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Remulazz, I appreciate your contribution to the project. Really! But -- even more so -- what will happen to all those good articles if the lmo.wikipedia were shut down?--Kemmótar 13:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    I don't know, and I don't care. All lombard can speak Italian, or another language spoken in the country where they live. There are no more person that speaks only a lombard dialect. The last has died many years ago. So, no problem. Really no problem. Somebody will delete them all? Well, OK. Somebody will store in a dump? OK. Free knowledge won't have a damage. --Remulazz 14:49, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    May I ask you, then, why you spent some of your time writing those articles? When you wrote them, you knew, of course, that all speakers of Lombard also speak Italian or some other language (and, if by chance some really old speaker of Lombard with no knowledge of Italian still lived, he/she probably wouldn't be sitting in front of a computer surfing on the Internet ;) )--Kemmótar 02:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Vorrei proprio capire per quale ragione Io, xaura, remulazz, jolly mfrieda e tutti gli altri lombardi che stanno votando per la chiusura dovrebbero essere politicamente contro la propria lingua (se esistesse). PS Non riesco a scriverlo in inglese, se qualcuno ha voglia traduca. --DracoRoboter 11:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    I'd like to understand why me, Xaura, Remulazz, Jollyroger, Frieda and all other lombards that are voting for the closure should be (for political reasons) against our language (if it existed). (translated by Remulazz 12:18, 29 November 2007 (UTC))

18. Keep I don´t think an ISO-3 language must be kicked out of Wikipedia. Gora lonbardiera! --Unai Fdz. de Betoño 22:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

    OK. And what about Akan? --Remulazz 08:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

19. Keep As stated by the International Standard Organization, the Lombard is spoken by more than 9.000.000 people (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lmo). And someone wants to close the Wikipedia of more than 9.000.000 peoples ? - Zuketort 10:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Milan, the city where I live, have a population of 1.300.000 people and I assure you that the first language spoken, different from Italian of course, is Cinese or maybe pugliese but surely not milanese. Maybe Etnologue sucks...? --DracoRoboter 11:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Ethnologue was also saying that Italian is a second language for those 9.000.000 people. Which, I'm sorry to say, is complete bullshit. Bon Zeenie 08:28, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

20. Keep. Some italian hates the Lombards. Not so Dante Alighieri, that wrote : "Se voi volete vedere o udire ... Toschi o Lombardi ...". -- Bobig 12:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Hey, master... I'm lombard too. Born, grown and still living in Lombardy near Milan. And so are at least twelve of the other pro voters. Ten other have lived, or have relatives in Lombardy. So we hate ourselves, like Kurt Cobain. Why don't you stop thinking to politics? Just a question: did you read the report I wrote? What do you think about it? Can you give me the title of a good standard Lombard grammar? --Remulazz 13:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    The motivation offered by Bobig is really stupid! --82.49.20.137 13:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    I'm 4/4 of milanese blood and maybe for this reason I can say that the sequences of letters stored under the Lumbaart wiki have nothing ("nagött" for my paysans) to do with any sort of languages or dialect spoken in Milano and around, and definitively nothing with what everybody can found in the en:Carlo Porta' books or still play today at the Mazzarella theater. --Bramfab 14:55, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    I'm only 50% milanese but I agree.

21. Keep Scusatemi se scrivo in italiano, mi è più facile che in inglese. Francamente non capisco il motivo per cui ci si stia accanendo contro il progetto Wikipedia Lombarda e non contro altre Wikipedie scritte in altre lingue minoritarie o dialetti. Se si chiude la WP lombarda, allora bisognerebbe prendere in considerazione chiudere anche tutte le altre scritte in lingue minoritarie o dialetti vari, più o meno standardizzati: lussemburghese, tibetana, siciliana, veneta, napoletana, ecc...--Siri68 15:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Perché il lombardo, a differenza del napoletano, non esiste per esempio? A me sembra una ragione sufficiente. --DracoRoboter 15:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Ecco un altro che non ha letto quello che ho scritto sopra. Sto semplicemente chiedendo di chiuderla, perchè non rispetta uno che uno dei requisiti di un progetto Wikipedia. --Remulazz 15:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

22. Jo comprenc el que passa amb el llombard. Jo mateix ho he viscut en carn pròpia doncs la llengua dels meus pares és una llengua minoritària, que només ha estat reconeguda com a oficial per el Principat d'Andorra:

    No està normalitzada. Encara que els parlants s'entenen els uns amb els altres no hi ha un sistema d'escriptura normalitzat. El cas del català no es tan greu, encara que les persones analfabetes a vegades no veuen als parlants de dialectes diferents al seu propi com a aliens a la pròpia llengua.

    Amb un nacionalisme mal entès els parlants, inclús qualque parlant de l'idioma minoritari, d'altres llengües volen imposar als minoritaris les llengües que es pretén que son majoritàries, oblidant que la llengua es un fet cultural, sinó l'arrel de la cultura, doncs el llenguatge és el medi de la transmissió del significat, l'objecte d'estudi de la sociologia.

    El llombard existeix i com a tal està reconegut per la pròpia Wikipedia:

    • Article de la Viquipèdia(Catalan)
    • Wikipedia(English)
    • Wikipédia(French)

    Pérez 17:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Si us plau, afegiu la plantilla {{keep}} a l'inici de la vostra contribució. Gracies :-) --Kemmótar 02:00, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

    What did you say? I can't understand well. Can't you write in English or, at least, Spanish? --Remulazz 18:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

    Don't close lombard wikipedia because it is a very good wiki.--Padaniandebèrghem 18:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC) sockpuppet

23. Keep Is a language spoken by people today. --Bergman 18:35, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
24. Keep Lombard is a language. --Pepetps 20:32, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
25. Keep Lombard is an independent language. I think that this Wikipedia is very useful. There is not at all need and the reason to close this Wikipedia.--榎 03:24, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
26. Keep. Thanks for the UNESCO reference: http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html. I didn't kown that document before. Reading it, it's difficult to understand the aggression against the Lombard Wiki. -- Rainbowl 08:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

    Have a look also at the Wurm quotation at the bottom of this discussion page -- it is also from a book sponsored by UNESCO.--Kemmótar 00:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

    The problem is that the Lombard Wiki is not written in the endangered language, but in Clamengh's own invented language!!! Bon Zeenie 10:40, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

27. Keep Lombard is a language, a minority language. If sysops make a wrong work we can't close this Wikipedia for a bad use. I think like SMP #7. What is worse, that the Wikipedia reach 100.000 articles (by a bot, like it occurred with Volapük) or that the language has no consencious orthography? Lombard exists, this one cancels the WMF policy about closing a Wikipedia which its language does not exist, and this one make unstable the other arguments.
    Pasqual (ca) · CUT 09:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

    Please compare the quality of the bot-generated pages from [8] and those in [9]. While I'm not a fan of bot-generated wikipedias, I think it's obvious that pages like lmo:Abergwydol are an insult to human intelligence, and even more so for lmo:United States. Bon Zeenie 10:35, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

28. Keep. It seems that someone has decided a "final solution" for the Lombard Wikipedia. That remembers me something ... -- Aprilx 12:46, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

    Reductio ad Hitlerum? --Jaqen 12:59, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

29. KeepPathetic that someone proposes to close the lombard wikipedia! Keko_dc (Not logged in)
30. Keep mi sun lunbardt de senper e internaçiunalista anca de senper mariorix (mario righi)

    Ma sun permetüü da curégjat i parentes quadar dal 'keep'--Kemmótar 02:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

31. Keep. Closing down a legitimate version of Wikipedia under the cover of worrying about orthography (!!!) doesn't even look like an honest approach. As for too many articles being stubs, that problem was there in the Danish Wikipedia too for a long time. Solution: Improvement, not slaughter. To those who crusade against this edition: Get a grip & help the project improve instead (plenty of room for that...), if you really have such valuable and useful insight... Then maybe you will have a chance to convince the others of us that this is not about nationalism through strangling dissent. -- Olve 17:10, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
32. Keep Funny how Italians are against something they've been taught to hate... freedom.
    Freedom is scary, isn't it? Do the proposer and the seconders of the closure belong to the Lombard Wiki group, are users of the wiki, are they involved into that? NO, not anymore, AFAICS. Why? Well, read all this through and you'll find yourself.
    Are they fighting against somebody? Looks like, from my POV is petty envy. Is it racial hatred? Maybe, and be VERY careful, you could face prosecution in the country I live now.
    I'm an ex-Lombardic, now living in Scotland. If an Englishman around here should ever think of disagreeing that there's a Scot language - very much different from English - the least he's going to face is public derision, up to being brought to court and fined for an unlimited sum, if somebody get it up the nose. I'm not joking.
    From my POV, this is steadily and quickly verging into racism - fascist or communist - of the worst type.
    I don't like this, let's exterminate. Pogrom.
    I'm living in Perth since 2004, and I can tell you that Glaswegian (Glasgow, East Scotland) is different from Dundonian (Dundee, West), but there is continuity in the grammatical structure and syntax throughout all of Scotland. Some words are spelt differently, some are typical of an area, but the underlying core is identical. The same must be told for Lombardic, that is very different from Italian in many syntactical aspects, but has a core underlying skeleton with different skins.
    An effort to unify all this flavours of Lombardic should be commended for the time these people is dedicating to it, not being slaughtered as a scapegoat onto the altar of a supposed "Italianity" (that BTW doesn't exist at all, it's a fiction all you've been taught to blindly believe to).
    Further reason to keep it is pure logic. Why destroy something? For bad it could be, it can't be worse than without it. It's another piece of your freedom that goes away, and God knows how much of it you Italians have given away already. Seen from up here, the proposer and seconders look like small children with a tantrum.
    Sorry if my post isn't embroidered with references and embellished with fancy quotations, but I don't need somebody's opinions to endorse my beliefs: I have mine, thanks.
    Oh, and please don't hide behind some written or unwritten Wikipedia rules as a justification to the closure of the Lombard Wiki, because - again - this means you're ready to give away another slice of you freedom. I want mine in its integrity, and I'll fight tooth and nails against anybody that's acting to give some of it away without my consent. -- Bodincus 19:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

    Honestly I'm sick and tired of being called racist or fascist. I'm lombard. So are my parents. So were my grandparents. I'm not racist against myself or my roots. I'm just pissed. Pissed because lmo. wiki sucks. Is by far the worst project of WMF. And it sucks because it has been filled with crap with a bot operated by an admin of lmo.wiki! And actually no-one has the power to stop this folly, and is virtually impossible to delete those 100.000 articles full of crap.

    Do you mean it is technically impossible to devise a robot that can remove them automatically?--Kemmótar 03:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    I'm not a bot expert. I'm sure it's possible to have such a robot, but I don't know how it can distinguish good articles from crap. And this bot needs admin rights. Who will grant them? Clamengh? I could do it, bypassing local burocrats, but I wont be a steward much longer. --Snowdog 10:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    I don't think that granting would be a major problem. After all, there are also other local bureaucrats... Please, do not forget that each bureaucrat is a different individual with her/his own ideas. The real problems are rather 1. how to make the 'cleaning bot' and 2. how to distinguish good articles from garbage. Also the very definition of garbage is not unproblematic. I would remove many 'number', 'asteroid' or 'album' articles from the Lombard Wikipedia but not from the English one, even if they were identical (except for the language), because the English Wikipedia contains also lots of very good articles. The problem for the Lombard Wikipedia is the amazingly high percentage of such 'empty' articles.--Kemmótar 22:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    I thought Clamengh was the only burocrat. Anyway, how to make a cleaning bot? No, idea. 2. How to distinguish good articles from bad? Not sure. The only thing that comes to my mind is deleting everything created by a bot. Otherwise someone will have to tag all articles that have to be deleted, so the bot can parse a category and delete. --Snowdog 23:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    And please everyone, stop accusing others of racism, fascism or whatever, or I will start to block some accounts around here. Good night. --Snowdog 02:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Your profile shows you listed as Italian, as an administrator on it.wikipedia, it.wikiquote, it.wiktionary and it.wikibooks, as well as the vice-president of Wikimedia Italia so you might want to consider that your threats of blocking people here will look like threats to strangle dissent in this particular setting. That being said, racism is neither a precise, nor useful, term here; and the same goes for fascism. Nationalism (or maybe rather chauvinism) getting a bit out of hand seems like a reasonably fitting label, though, and the current campaign looks very suspicious to a great deal of people elsewhere in the Wiki community. I doubt that anyone would be opposed to making the Lombard project better, and that is the natural course of action here. I am not saying that that will be an easy task. But it is an appropriate one. Closing down this project for the highly debatable (and in some cases plain misguided) reasons listed would be a scandal for the whole Wiki community — and it would put the Italian one in a particularly grim light. -- Olve 11:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    I don't care what my profile says. This kind of accusations are disruptive for such a delicate discussion and have to stop. Or will be stopped. --Snowdog 11:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Please read en:Conflict of interest. Also, thank you for exemplifying my point though threatening me too. (see Snowdog's clarification below) -- Olve 12:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Can you show me where exactly I have threatened you? --Snowdog 13:19, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Yes: You wrote: "This kind of accusations are disruptive for such a delicate discussion and have to stop. Or will be stopped." -- Olve 13:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    We were talking about people accusing others of fascism, and the above sentence was referred to them, not to you. Hence I wasn't threatening you. Sorry. Try again. --Snowdog 14:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Ah. The way it looked, it seemed that you were referring to my immediately preceding post. The point of bringing in third parties to deal with the blocking or no-blocking question still stands, though. -- Olve 14:28, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Insults are out of question. No matter where they come from. I see no conflict of interest in blocking people that prefers insults to discussion. --Snowdog 13:36, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    See below for a more detailed explanation. -- Olve 13:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    I don't know how labelling people as nationalist/chauvinist can not be considered a personal attack. And besides, I don't know how you can label the people voting close as nationalist, given the reasons they gave, and given the kb's of discussion and rationale given below in the comments section. So you cannot say this project damages the language of my grandparents without being accused of nationalism, but you can say [Italianity] doesn't exist at all, it's a fiction all you've been taught to blindly believe to. Interesting. Bon Zeenie 11:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    "This wiki is bad — someone improve it!" is a quite legitimate complaint. "This wiki is bad — someone delete it!" lights a few red lamps... One of the main reasons for the proposal is that it is "anti-italian". More red lamps... I do not say that you, Bon Zeenie, have this or that ideology. And every person voting here my have any combination of motivation/s. Also, action to delete a Wikipedia project by default requires greater scrutiny of motivations and validity. I agree that saying that [Italianity] doesn't exist..." is quite imprecise. That is just a smaller problem right now. We agree that the Wikipedia edition in question has problems. They need to be fixed. -- Olve 12:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Olve, may I remind you that lmo.wiki is under GFDL? The point of people voting "Close" is that the situation in lmo.wiki has degenerated to a point that the only solution is closing it. There is nothing that would prevent anyone from reopening it, with good articles taken from the old version. Of course if somebody wants to open it will have to show good will and will have to prove that he won't build the same pile of crap that lmo.wiki is now. Besides, en:Conflict of interest does not say anything about this situation. The only way in which I see Snowdog having a COI, is that he was one of the people subject to obvious personal attacks; while en:WP:ATTACK says that Blocking for personal attacks should only be done for prevention, not punishment, I don't see anywhere written that an admin cannot block people that have attacked him, and another admin must intervene instead. Bon Zeenie 13:31, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    A): GFDL: Yes, I am actually considering that.

    b): Reopening a closed project: My impression is that that is extremely difficult.

    c): Conflict of interests: The Conflict of interest is that the closing down of this project is linked with the assumption that the population in question will/are/should/must be writing on the Italian Wikipedia instead. Being a central person in the Italian Wikipedia is then a conflict of interests in this setting. I am not saying he shouldn't participate. I am saying that he should not use his steward status to interfer with this discussion by use of force.

    d): Blocking those who offend you personally: I am not familiar with the exact policy on this here, but on most wikipedias I have worked with, the appropriate action would be to alert another admin rather than to start (and keep) threatening to do it yourself.

    -- Olve 13:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    c) Snow is Lombard and, obviously, Italian, WMI tries to pubblicize all "italian" languages and one of the board of WMI is a vec.wp admin. Italians in general, afaik, love its dialalects. d): Someone here call fascist anyone want close lmo, not only snow. --DracoRoboter 14:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Reopening a project should not be any more difficult than opening one. (It is however harder to get a project opend now as oposed to during the early days.)

    But mind you all, closing a wiki doesen't automatically mean deleting it. There are quite a few closed wikis sitting around with their old content in place. See for instance ii.wikipedia and tlh.wikipedia.

    A mausoleum with over 100 000 more or less useless pages that nobody can edit isn't something I would like to have. Someone will have to do something with all those pages, and the best would be if the lmo.wikipedia community was heavily involved in that. --Jorunn 14:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Exactly. If this project is shut down, the pages will stay 'out there' with a lot of useless garbage that nobody can remove. Therefore I believe that the right course of action would be:

    a. to identify and stop ASAP the 'garbage Bots' still at work (NB: not all Bots produce useless garbage);

    10caartbot, Blamengh and [10]. --Snowdog 23:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    b. to devise a 'cleaning Bot' in order to remove useless pages;

    c. to define some sustainable policy concerning the two crucial issues of different varieties and orthographies;

    d. to write new articles and improve the quality of existing articles.

    I've already started --Snowdog 23:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Me too --Vermondo 01:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

    e. the East/West issue could be handled as in the Norwegian case with Bm. and Nyn.: a single project to start with, splitting later 'as good and cooperative friends' when the time is ready.

    Btw.: please, don't forget that the Lombard language issue concernes areas belonging to two sovereign states: Switzerland and Italy.--Kemmótar 23:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    Olve, I fundamentally agree with you. But, please, don't cry for every word you hear against you. I have been defined many times as fascist. --Remulazz 12:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    PS - @ everybody: I can't write in English very well, but I feel confident you understand. I'm not fascist, I'm quite tired to be defined so and I'm not the punching-ball of anyone. At the next fascist, I will ask some measures against attackers. The personal attack seems to be the rule here.

    As I have also pointed out, I agree that calling you or anyone else fascist or racist over this is counterproductive. Measures may be called for, but they should not be used as a "weapon" by admins who have a clear conflict of interest in this issue. -- Olve 13:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    I don't think that, in this context, calling anyone fascist, racist is any worse than nationalist or chauvinist is any difference. In all cases, you are judging other people based on what you believe their ideas are. Nowhere on this page did anybody say that the closing down of this project is linked with the assumption that the population in question will/are/should/must be writing on the Italian Wikipedia instead. That is your personal innuendo. Bon Zeenie 08:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

    No personale innuendo there, I'm afraid. "Fascist" is a specific political ideology, "racist" does not apply to what language you think your neighbour who looks exactly like you should write. "Nationalist", and to some degree also "chauvinist", are wider terms which may or may not apply here. Nationalist is a term which can be very much associated with both positive and negative things. It is not at all wrong to be a nationalist as such. Do you see these distinctions? -- Olve 13:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

33. Keep I abhorr this mentality; "ban everything you don't like or support". --Ekko 14:04, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
34. Keep lombard wikipedia. If our wiki have problems, we will work hard to solve them, but if lombard wiki will close, we will remain without voice. --Cascinone 18:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
35. Keep Lombard wikipedia means Freedom, if it will be closed, we will be less free.--Pacipaciana 18:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
36. Keep beyond the italian-political controversary regarding lombardia and the internal wikipedian problem regarding its' artificial size (resembling that of the volapuk wiki) the english wiki tells me that lombard language does exists, and actually has about 10,000,000 speakers. So perhaps some reform is neede in many aspects in the lmo wiki, but complete closure is out of the question, from my POV. The Relativity of The Truth 12:45, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
37. Keep Strong support to keep. It's incredible. A Regional Language (following the European Charte of the Regional Languages) demonstrate to exist, and some italian wants to deny that. -- Fuffy 13:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

    you are misunderstanding the opinion of the people (esp. italians) who voted close. lombard languages do exist, a single lombard language does not. it is a continuum including at least two not mutually intelligible languages; kemmotar agreed to this and called utopic the creation of a single eastern+western lombard wikipedia. even besides this, nobody seems to consider the current poor state of the project. i don't even need to link specific articles, to show it!!!!! Bon Zeenie 15:37, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

38. Keep From my Tirol, I quote in all "Fuffy". It's ridiculous that, as many reported, the ISO and the UNESCO (and also Dante Alighieri) referenced a "Lombard" language, and some people (maybe with no studies in linguistic) continues to say that that language must not exist. -- Laurin 15:58, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

    Many different Lombard languages do exist, this is the problem. No single standard for them. Would you like an "Iberian Romance Wikipedia", with both articles in Spanish and Portuguese (and other languages, of course)? I wouldn't. MFG 17:16, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

    Ma dai! I bin a Lombarda un auch a Sprachwissenschaftla und kann di ßogen, dass es mehrere "Sprachen" in Lombardei gibt. Koan einziges "Lombarderisch". Gell? --Vermondo 00:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

39. Keep --Insübrich 18:16, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
40. Keep --KRISTAGA^α-ω 22:10, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
41. Keep --Erlendnn 22:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
42. Keep ----EIRIK\^talk 23:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
43. Keep, although I mostly agree with the 'close' party, and disagree with the 'keep' one. The reasons of my vote are explained in a separate section. Tèstaquêdra 01:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
44. Keep Strong support. Please don't contrast the regional languages. If a regional Wiki grows, all Wikipedia grows. -- Masciarelli 11:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
45. Keep Klenije 16:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
46. Keep. Keep, and the italianists should put their hands off the others Wikipedia. Beretta 10:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
     :::I think that everybody willing to contribute to the LMO-WP, as an independent project and no appendix of any other, should be welcome. Besides, it should never be forgotten that this project represents communities of speakers in two different sovereign states: Switzerland and Italy. Both communities should be represented in the LMO Wikipedian community.--Kemmótar 16:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
47. Keep Keep. Italians requested to close the Lombard Wiki only because it is over 100.000.
    Stinkhorn 08:02, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
48. Keep Period. ---- Shaturne 09:53, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
49. Keep I quote in all "Stinkorn". The problem arises when the LMO Wiki went over 100.000. Do italians will propose to close any little Wikipedia, when it will be over 100.000? , Arcobalengo 12:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
50. Keep this whole thing is only about standard language speakers not able to understand the problems which have to be faced by lesser-used/non-standard languages (problems bred through standard language oppression of non-standard languages). A non-standard language Wikipedia functions other than a standard language Wikipedia. And that is good! --::Slomox:: >< 17:20, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

    How could we write an encyclopedia without having a language standard? This is a real practical issue, not an ideological one. A language standard is necessary, and we can't invent one. MFG 11:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

    A standard is not necessary. It can ease things, but it is not necessary. Why should it? --::Slomox:: >< 01:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

51. Keep KEEP!--Cascinone 17:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
52. Keep and stop attacks against some voters reasons. Lombard language exists, in several forms, and it's not the only language on Wikipedia existing with several local forms and without any real standard form (see for example Limburgian Wikipedia). If there are problems with LMO sysops (I actualy said if), it is not a good reason to close a project. This proposal is stupid and oppressive. Hégésippe | ±Θ± 04:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
53. Keep I have watched this project very closely over the past few weeks. I think they have finally started working towards quality. I see the empty junk being deleted and important infrastructure being worked on like translating the MediaWiki tags. I see actual, real articles being worked on. All of these are promising signs. I hope to see them continue down this road. You have a long way to go, but it is evident that you are working on it. We should be patient and not delete this while they are working on this. Furthermore, a big "thank you" to Remulazz and other members of the new administration for all of your hard work. Keep up the good work! -- Yekrats

    Are you crazy, Yekrats? Are you thanking a stupid, illiberal and oppressive fascist? What are you? A collaborationist? --Remulazz 07:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC) PS I'd like to know why the great majority of the keepers said that I am a fascist. Why not nazist, for example? I think nazist is a heavier insult than fascist. [... Remulazz, you are definitely a nazist. We are sure you thought to a ''final solution'' for every lombard on the face of Earth...]. It may be more impressive, I think.

    Maybe I misunderstand the word fascist, but I don't see how that applies here. This is not political. This is cleaning up embarrassing junk. I delete that kind of garbage almost every day in the Esperanto Wikipedia. I'm glad that someone in LMO has a sense about what an article should be, and delete the substandard fluff which was only there to artificially inflate numbers. (I'm sorry Remulazz, I put the wrong name there. I guess I am crazy.) -- Yekrats 18:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

54. Keep I consider the simple idea of closing a minority language wikipedia stupid and illiberal. Everything human is perfectible, and wikipedia's can most easily be corrected by editing and by democratic competition for administrative positions, according to the wikipedia spirit. The fascistoid attitude that exists in Italy against regional languages is really a shame: G.Mazzini began writing that south-Tyroleans were "germanic, but easy to italianize" ("di stirpe teutonica, ma facili ad italianizzare"), the Fascist State followed up, enforcing by law a forceful italianization of place names and last names of French, German and Slovene origin. Here somebody wants to shut down the Lombard wikipedia because there is not a single Lombard language. But this is the normal historical status of any language: a family of dialects. See the ancient Greek, the ancient Sanskrit, nowadays Basque. The Italian climate regarding local languages (a mixture of deep ignorance and illiberal attitudes) can probably explain why admins here developed some harsh edges. However human weaknesses and errors cannot be an excuse for suppressing the development of the Lombard wikipedia. --Nozdreff 15:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC).
55. Keep As others point out above, UNESCO and others have affirmed that it is a language. Even if it were merely an invented language, that is not in itself reason to close the project (see Esperanto). If the people who speak Lombard speak a variety of dialects, that is not a reason to close: see the early Norwegian project before it split; see the English Wikipedia which includes (very slightly) different spellings from different parts of the world. The project has pages. I read a few. They are obviously in a language: I can understand parts of some of them. If I can understand them, then surely the speakers of different dialects can understand each other most of the time. The pages I read looked factual and scientific, not politically skewed. If it is a language which up to now has had little or no writing, then Wikipedia can help to provide information to people in this language: that's even more important than providing information to people who can also get the same information in books in their language. I think the Wikimedia vision is to provide information to everyone in the world. --Coppertwig 01:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
56. Keep I see two questions here: the quality of lmo.wiki, and the existence of Lombard as a single language. On the first question: the quality was indeed appalling, but it is now steadily improving, and the lmo community is obviously taking the right steps to make lmo.wp a viable and intersting project. I think they should be given the opportunity to do that. On the second question: this should be decided by the lmo community itself. There are other projects where more than one dialect is involved (rumantsch grischun -- rm.wp -- comes to mind), where some solution was found. If the lmo.wp community thinks it's better to have two or three wp projects rather than one, then let them decide it and say so (by e.g. submitting a proposal for a new Wikipedia); if they think that there's a way to make lmo.wp work well despite dialectal diversity, then let them try. In both cases, lmo.wp shouldn't be closed now. (A final point: perceived anti-Italian or anti-whatever feelings are again no reason to close the wiki, but to give them warnings and ultimately to desysop the responsible admins. Bigotry and prejudice also occur in other Wikipedias, and are dealt with without closing the project.) --Smeira 10:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
57. Keep It is way too obvious that many people who want to close this project are people living in the Lombard area and aren't even able to speak any Lombard variety (which are commonly referred to as "dialetti" just as the French would use "patois" for Occitan). I don't know the real content of this Wikipedia but Lombard is obviously a language separate from Italian, and some unity even if it has local variations or varieties as all the other languages have... Regional languages are so utterly endangered that it would be unfair to deprive Lombard from such a great medium as is the Wikipedia, please give it a chance! Thanks! Capsot 22:37, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
58. Keep Lompard Language is exist, and Lombard Wikipedia must be kept. --/Pauk 05:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
59. Keep There's currently a community aiming at quality. Malafaya 18:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
60. Keep I forgot to vote. Stop to destroy! Grillino 14:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
61. Keep All right, now is a wikipedia. --DracoRoboter 20:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
62. Keep I think the better solution would be to completely replace the admins.--Certh 11:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
63. Keep Now Lombard Wikipedia is a good health Wikipedia. Pérez 14:34, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

arbitray sectio nbraek for easier editing

1. Keep It is a language. There is activity, Maybe some policies are bad, but this is not to be resolved on meta en.Jasy jatere80.61.183.71 18:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
2. Keep Advocating closure not improvement is not wiki.

And the arguments are all unconvincing:

1. A single Lombard language does not exist. That would suggest splitting the Wiki not terminating it - at the very worst. But Norwegian and Serbo-Croat are also divided languages. We may have a problem there, as I've argued in the lmo Wiki, but as long as mutual intelligibility is real (and it is, or at least 95% real) it is not a huge problem.

2. There is no accepted standard spelling or grammar. Hey man, that is also the case for English! Those who argue so don't like the colour of freedom. Sorry, I've mis-spelt it, I meant "color". Sorry again, I meant "mis-spelled". I get confused with all my traveling - I mean "travelling" -- Admittedly, the scope for spelling and grammar differences is narrower in English, but it is there - and you should expect quite a few more problems of that same kind in an endangered language.

3. The language in the Lmo is artificial. Perhaps... But so is Esperanto, Interlingua, Slovianski, Ido and what have you.

4. A Lombard wiki is not needed as all Lombard speakers are also speakers of Italian. If it has readers, it's not unneeded. If it's little needed, let those who don't need it not use it: but why deprive those who do need, or want, or appreciate it of their toy (or--tool)? And -- there are no native speakers of Latin, the speakers all are native speakers of some other language, so -- shouldn't we put paid to the Latin Wiki too?

5. Lombard is not a recognized language in any state. If this were a legitimate ground for dismantling a Wiki, it would also be right, by analogy, to destroy a temple of any religion that was not recognized in any state, and to kill those people who are not citizens of any state or don't have a certificate of birth from any state. It is hard to assume good faith in those who put forward such an argument. Pan Brerus (talk) 23:19, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Radical proposal

Here comes a 'radical' proposal:

- the Lombard Wikipedia should be kept;

- all the articles resulting from mere Bot activity should be removed as soon as possible;

- the orthographic solutions deemed as unacceptable by the community and/or not rooted in existing Lombard traditions should be avoided. The texts in the Lombard Wikipedia should be gradually adapted to an orthographic standard the community of both wikipedians and potential readers can feel comfortable with;

- the main priority should be to write a few, good articles with a high standard of quality (such articles could also be translations or summaries of articles in other languages);

- the quality of the Lombard Wikipedia should also be enhanced with photographs, maps and other graphic material, sound files, etc. related to the Lombard speaking area and its culture (such information is less likely to be found in other Wikipedias, and would be a valuable contribution to the global Wikipedia community).

(For a couple of examples of what I mean by (acceptable) orthographic solutions rooted in existing Lombard traditions, please look at these articles:

http://lmo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%ADmica ('Chímica')

http://lmo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cnificada ('Ünificada', still a stub) )

--Kemmótar 23:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be a good start of dialogue towards an acceptable solution. What does your colleague think about this? --M/ 00:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Not enough IMO at least they have to

• decide which language is used (e.g. milanese or bergamasco), unofficially starting a "mil".wp or a "bgm".wp. I wonder why do we care about ISO when just it gets wrong.

The Alemannic Wikipedia uses different dialects, with a box specifying in which dialect the article is written. I think this is a good solution that could be used also for the Lombard Wikipedia. I can't see why it should be a problem if someone writes e.g. in Milanese and another in Koiné Ticinese or, say, in Como dialect, since they are varieties very close to each other. A common standard could be developed gradually. On the other hand, I think it is a much more urgent issue to use a common orthography. This could be the one officially used by CDE (the largest institution doing research on (some) Lombard varieties) or some variant of it.--Kemmótar 11:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• desysop all admin.
• try to start a real community (IMO better if composed by people from lombardy and switzerland where there are some real mother language...)

--DracoRoboter 10:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The present Sysops are already native speakers of LMO--Kemmótar 10:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure... , I guess you are also klingon native speaker, aren't you? Anyway I was talking about community in general not only of (formerly-I-hope-and-never-in-the-life-or-over-my-cold-body) admin. DracoRoboter 10:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I do enjoy watching Star Trek, but unfortunately I know only a couple of words in Klingon. On the other hand, I am a native speaker of a Lombard variety (I actually speak more than one), as everyone who has conversed in Lombard with me can confirm. The variety I use is a kind of Koiné Ticinese. A riessi mia a capí parchè a metii in dübi che mi a sia un parlaant natiif. Chii ch'i a parlaa o scambiaa messacc cun mi i pö cunfermall.--Kemmótar 11:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

So, my friend, you are a ticinese native speaker not a LMO one. LMO native speakers simply do not exist... (kaplà)DracoRoboter 11:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC) (bella gioia perché tèee hai dètto di parlare el "lumbard natif" minga el menegin, ul ticines, bergamasch. T'è capiii? "Lavoro, guadagno, spendo e pretendo. Taaaac"

Ok, I see. So a Norwegian born in Stavanger and a native speaker of the Stavanger dialect is not a speaker of Norwegian, according to your opinion... Btw.: whatever my views or my opponent's views, I always reply in a civilised way. Why can't you do the same? My experience tells me that when people start calling their opponents names, etc. it is because they lack better arguments...--Kemmótar 11:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Irony is civilized: that's the way civilized persons can be aggressive without danger. Anyway, already said: Norway is a state and that was a decision of a state. I never heard of a similar decision by Italy or, at least, Lombardy. Do you? --DracoRoboter 12:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC) Non so cosa intendi con "start calling their opponents names", sarebbe? Magari scrivilo in italiano visto che altrimenti continuerei a non capire.

To call someone names: "to - s.o. names, insultare qualcuno" [11]--Kemmótar 21:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

A few comments: My first comment is that I know Kemmótar personally. He is a native speaker of Lombard who has academic training in phonetics and linguistics. He is in fact a former student of mine, and lives in Norway. My second comment is: Most languages of the world are NOT official languages of any state, and most languages do not even have an established orthography. But they are still languages. For instance, Norwegian existed before the orthographies came into exitence, and both Nynorsk (then: Landsmål) and Bokmål (then: Riksmål/Rigsmaal) existed as orthographies for quite a while before they were officially recognised. OK, a third comment: Several established orthographies are far from uniform. For instance, the Nynorsk word for "followed" can be "fylgde, fylgte, følgde, følgte", and there are even competing inflexional paradigms for nouns. Still, this is seen as natural variation within one language, and as an orthographic reflexion of its spoken dialects. Jea 14:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

My first comment is "who cares"? My second is: who lives in lombardy do not think that milanese and bergamaschi speak the same language, I'm sorry. My last is: convince Italy or Regione Lombardia to unify languages after that we can start speaking about lmo language. DracoRoboter 15:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Keep the wiki, but delete ALL bot additions. OR Remove the wiki, but reopen in Incubator I generally agree with this proposal. Possibly I would also be in favor of desysoping the admins until they become more mature. I want the Lombard community to be given a second chance, but they must do it right. -- Yekrats 11:52, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The two solution do not necessarily exclude each other. First, you could try to

Keep the wiki, but delete ALL bot additions. After some time, if this does not produce the desired improvement, Remove the wiki, but reopen in Incubator.

Btw, what do you mean by "more mature" ?--Kemmótar 12:00, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• First off, I agree. The first remedy before the second would be my preference.
• By "more mature" I mean: The Lombardian community is so greedy and obsessed by the numbers in order to make a political point that they have totally left quality by the wayside. The administrators need to be mature and responsible in order to curtail and control that, without being too heavy-handed. It's usually a bad idea to ban forever... Forever is a long time. It seems (from an outsider's perspective only) that they are beligerent jingoists. They have attacked me about political issues, when my arguments had nothing to do with politics. I can only imagine what it's like there. Also, the "we'll use all dialects and have an article for each" is a terrible idea. (See their article for "water".) They should establish some guidelines about the language and stick with them. Establish a standard Lombardian grammar book and dictionary, and guidelines for style, and consistently use them. This is what we did in the Esperanto Wikipedia, and sometimes people with a particular regional perspective try to insert neologisms or nonstandard usage into our encyclopedia. Since we have a basic group of tenets which is unchangeable (like our en:Fundamento de Esperanto, Plena Manlibro de Gramatiko, Plena Ilustrita Vortaro, among others), we can deal with conflicts about language issues, and settle on standard usage, so we don't have 5 different words meaning the same thing. (Which is possible in Esperanto.) -- Yekrats 13:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

You wrote ""we'll use all dialects and have an article for each" is a terrible idea." I didn't mean that the same article, say for 'dog', should exist in different varieties: can, cá, cagnòl, etc. What I meant is that some articles sholuld be in one variety and some in the other, depending on who is writing or editing the article. But this poses a problem: If I, e.g., were to start writing an article about dogs, I would write it in a Ticinese/Western Lombard koiné. A speaker of Eastern Lombard or some other variety with no active knowledge of Ticinese/Western Lombard koiné would not be able to edit it. This IS a problematic issue that should be solved in some way. Maybe there could be a pool of Eastern and Western 'proofreaders'.--Kemmótar 19:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• By more mature, I also mean that the administrators should voluntarily cut their own bot usage: Voluntarily delete your own garbage, and stop using robots to create articles. Admit to the problem, and then start working on it. That is maturity. Become good Wiki-citizens, and you will have my support. Trim your wikipedia back to the 500 or 1000 non-bot articles.

Even 50, if necessary! I repeat my appeal: remove all articles created by robots. Those users who have created the robots (I myself haven't!) should exhibit responsibility as Wikipedians and, if necessary, devise a 'removing robot' to purge the Lombard Wikipedia of all bot articles.--Kemmótar 19:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you will have a small Wikipedia, but you will have respect and honor and dignity. Right now, this Wikipedia makes your language seem like a terrible joke. It makes your language and your entire language-rights movement look bad.

Jes, mi samopiniis kun vi! Malgranda sed fidinda kaj solida lombarda Vikipedio estas preferinda!--Kemmótar 19:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

At the Esperanto Wikipedia, we had to do our own soul-searching and come to the decision to avoid bots and work on quality. Because we are an "artificial language" we are seen by many as a non-serious project (despite the fact that there are several hundred native Esperantists, who speak it as a mother-tongue, and we have a vital Esperanto culture). We work very hard to be taken seriously, so we have worked as a community to do various things. We had our own growing pains and added robot-stubs like you, and we finally decided to do it no more, because we are concerned about quality. We are working hard to complete the List of articles every Wikipedia should have. (We have only 25 to go!!!!) This is possible for you too, but you have to take the steps to make QUALITY the #1 goal. -- Yekrats 13:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with Yekrats and, in part, with Kemmotar proposal. But there are two focal points left unsolved.

1. Who will assure us that keeping the wiki deleting ALL bot additions won't let the soliti noti (lmo.wiki current admins/users, I mean) to start again with the current trend? Nobody. The soliti noti will keep on blocking undesired people and behave in their absurd way (maybe they'll just stop using bots) (maybe). lmo.wiki needs a pluralistic community, in which everybody can say his opinion without fearing to be banned. That's why I think the best way to manage this situation is to close lmo.wiki or to send it back to the incubator, permitting new interested people to freely join the project. Just let the community (a community, not an oligarchy or something else!) grow, then we could reopen lmo.wiki.
2. lmo.wiki or, better, mil.wiki+bgm.wiki (code used as an example, of course)? That's the second point! I appreciate, Kemmotar, your efforts to answer point by point to crticisms (btw, you're the only one from lmo.wiki to answer to the questions without speaking of racism and politics). I understand you're an expert in this matters. Me and other lombard people (btw, a lot of us wrote on this page in favor of a closure) are not that expert, as you guess, but agree on the idea that a unique lmo.wiki is simply nonsense. Well, you studied a lot about languages, dialects, their formation and their transmission but... why our everyday experience shold be completely wrong? Lo sentiamo sulla nostra pelle (we can feel on our skin). Ok, ok, no original research and other stuff like this (in which I believe, btw), but I think that maybe in medio stat virtus also in this case. Btw, I think that two different wikis would preserve community from artificial ideas like koines: more similar dialects, less difficulties to find a common way to write. --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 16:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think your everyday experience is wrong. I believe that unifying Eastern and Western Lombard in one single koiné is merely utopic. Of course, technically speaking it could be done -- linguists can even reconstruct Proto-Indo-European with a high degree of plausibility. But the resulting koiné would probably be rejected by both Eastern and Western speakers. What I still believe is that is should be possible to let them co-exist within the same Wikipedia. But, anyway, a lmo-e and a lmo-w Wikipedia would be better than no lmo Wikipedia at all.--Kemmótar 19:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I like Kemmótar's idea, I think it could be a reasonable solution. I'd personally prefer having two separate wikipedias, since Western and Eastern Lombard are different enough - maybe this should be pointed out to the ISO guys. What is really necessary is that sysops stop calling vandalism everything that they don't like - this includes discussing the fact that Bergamasch and Milanés are very different, not that much mutually intelligible. Also, the ban of the Italian language in discussions, even by native speakers contributors, is what is perceived as "leghista" - this seems quite unnecessary, there's no point in forcing a discussion to be in English if both people are more fluent in Italian. lmo.wiki has a bunch of reasonably good articles, but they're all too well hidden by the large mass of crap bot-generated articles. I think restarting from scratch may be easier than changing the current situation. Cruccone 23:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The use of English in this discussion makes it accessible to many users who understand neither Lombard nor Italian. Anyway, I see your point.

Maybe the two separate Wikipedias could be united in a sort of 'confederation', i.e. sharing technical solutions and layout, mutually linking articles and -- last but not least -- sharing a common orthography (which, of course, does not mean a common language!).--Kemmótar 00:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

...l'uso della lingua inglese rende però inaccessibile a chi come me milanese non parla quella lingua... ma forse non è interessa l'opinione di molti "locali"... comunque se ho capito bene sembra che vogliate proporre la creazione di due versioni in milanese e bergamasco... mi sembra poco sensato, in quanto si tratta di due (bellissimi) dialetti... di questo passo mi aspetto la futura richiesta di creare il lodigiano o roba del genere... --Torsolo 14:57, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

We can improve it without diktat and radical proposals!!!!--Pacipaciana 12:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

How do you suggest? -- Yekrats 14:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments

1. Comment I am personally ignorant if Lombard is an actual language or not, so I will not vote, however... I do know that politics and national identity can be difficult and polarizing issues. That being said, I think at the very least I see about 100000 pages of useless junk: thousands of integers, songs and albums ("X is a song on Y".), tens of thousands of municipalities and asteroids. Worse yet, pretty much all of the pages have broken templates and vestiges of the English Wikipedia they were lifted from. Examples: 1, 2, 3 (a lot of useless integers), 4; I think you get the idea. Using bots to import small amounts of information correctable by the community is fine, and a good idea. This is clearly beyond what the community can handle, and it shows. Since the community can't maintain it, I think it should be purged of the bot junk. The admins of the Lombard wikipedia should be ashamed and embarrassed. --Yekrats 01:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Keep the Lombard Wikipedia (I have already voted in the 'Keep' section) I don't agree with Yekrats. There are lots of interesting articles in the Lombard Wikipedia, e.g. http://lmo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%ADmica and others.

   Translated from fr by that bad guy which is Remulazz, BTW... --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 08:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   Besides, The ISO 639-3 stated that Lombard is a language :

   cf. http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=lmo.

   cf. also Ethnologue : http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lmo.

   and so UNESCO : http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html.--Kemmótar 18:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Hey, don't attack me. You have over 100000 "articles" of fluff and garbage and stuff in other languages. You showed your article on chemistry, about 6000 bytes including interwiki links. That's a good start, I guess. You might have ten or twenty articles like that, but YOU'VE STILL GOT 110000 articles of garbage! Here's a point that I think you should address: If this is an encyclopedia in the Lombard language, why is there SO MUCH ENGLISH IN IT? I just did a random sample of 10 "random page" clicks: only two were totally in Lombard (one of which being lmo:1539 having three words on it). Six were partially in English, one partially in French, and one was part of your wonderful lists of asteroids series, encompasing thousands of pages of lists of asteroids with their astronomical designation and little else. How do you call yourself a "Lombard" wiki when so much of it is in a foreign language? I could not find a ISO 639-3 designation for Englombardish. Your Wikipedia is terrible, as a result of stupid choices by the Lombard community. -- Yekrats 21:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

   Yes, Yekrats. Most of their articles are unacceptable and should be deleted. In addition, lmo community and their sysops have not been able keep the minimal encyclopedic quality that a wikipedia project requires and this should be taken seriously. --SMP (talk page) 13:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

1. I'm always glad to support small 'pedias and small projects in general. When a project grows, people must ensure to make their community also grow. Are you sure that 3 sysops and a handful of active users can afford the effort needed to keep up with 100,000 articles? Are you sure that you can afford a sort of multilinguism inside a single wiki project? Since I do not see a clear answer, I place myself here. --M/ 22:42, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you being sarcastic? If so, it's not coming across well. If you are making a encyclopedia in the Lombard language, then presumably, (see if you can follow this very important point) you should use the LOMBARD LANGUAGE. I shouldn't find English or French in any articles, yet I find them in 2/3rds of the articles. That is a severe red flag that something is terribly wrong here. That tells me that this wretched faux encyclopedia needs to be purged of it's false empty fluff. I support you having a Wikipedia; I do not support you filling it with fluff -- especially fluff of OTHER LANGUAGES -- to elevate your statistics. I think that should be obvious. - Yekrats 01:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

They do not use a lombard language: they write in many dialects. --Tooby 02:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

As a discussion hint I'd like to give a short report of last activities on lmo.wiki: 50K+ of articles all (but 3!) created by a single bot of a single user: [12] [13] [14] [15]: georaphy almost empty stubs, interesting integers, many asteroids that orbit around the sun, songs' stubs and it's not someting that is happening only in the last days. All such articles has a notice on the top of the page that states the language in wich the page is composed "Lombard souradialectal, Ortographa ORS" ("Lombard koiné, ORS orthography": a red link)... Sic! --Pap3rinik 11:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Some misunderstandings

There are some misunderstandings in this votation:

1. Please Ethnologue is not a Bible also because Ethnologue made a lot of mistakes and the definition of language is not well done, in any case the definition of Ethnologue is simple and cannot be accepted because doesn't mirror the reality, I know that this source is easy to use and some persons has a strict trust on it, but these persons must know that this is not a good source
2. Lumbard is a collection of different languages or dialects, is not a "single" language and a lot of these languages/dialects are not understandble each other

We have a parallel with Limba Sarda (which has got an ISO code) and with Rumantsch (which has got also an ISO code). These two languages are also "artificial languages" because no people can speak Limba Sarda or Rumantsch, but no people can write something using the different version of Sardinian or Rumatsch because there are no rules well defined. For this reason administrative organizations (in Switzerlend the Grischun Canton, in Italy the Sardinian Region) have defined these "artificial" languages to write administrative documents taking some words or gramatical rules from each different dialect. The problem of Lumbard is that no administrative organization has defined this "meta-language", at moment Lumbard is a simple collections and division. In Tessin, for example, the Canton has defined a Lexicon for the local dialect (which is a part of Lumbard) but only in an "ethnologic" point of view.

For this reason if we would force the acceptance of Lumbard we must also defined what is Lumbard, because for the other two examples (Rumantsch and Limba Sarda) we can say that we accept the rules defined by the Canton or by the Region, but for the Lumbard we must say who has defined this language. The ISO code is not sufficient. Are we main source and we can define what is Lumbard? These are the same reasons that I have exposed during the acceptance of Lumbard Wikipedia at start, at moment, after some years, these doubts remain still untouched.

In any case this Wikipedia cannot be acceptable for two main reasons:

1. there is no community, the editors are mainly Bots, the Wikis must have a community (the problem is that the users has problems to know which language/dialect they must use if there are no a real "Lumbard")
2. using Ethnologue as main source to define languages we are making an "articial" distinction, we are POV (because we dont follow other sources) and we are not reliable (because Ethnologue is not realiable)

The simple and mechanic association "ISO code=Language=Wikipedia" is a very unrealistic association because we are going to create Wikipedias which has no life because has not community.

--Ilario 12:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

The sources that have been presented (Ethnologue, ISO SIL, UNESCO ...) are so important and famous to be considered as reliable. And at the moment nobody has presented any similar source which states that Milanese and Bergamasco (for example) are different languages. We have only heard people saying "oh, I have lived in both cities and they sound very different" which clearly is an original research. I agree that a community should have been created at first and that they should have decided which orthographies had more literary tradition, and I am not sure if this was done. But what you cannot say is that this implies that a language recognized by many important linguistic authorities does not exist. --SMP (talk page) 13:00, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

If the opinion of a milanese o bergamasco mother language (like some of the voters here) is not important I wonder how ethnologue and other so called "reliable source" had listed languages of the world... --DracoRoboter 13:57, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Lombard is a language with a lot of varieties and similarities, but exactly it is a linguistic group of languages. A source different from UNESCO, SIL and Ethnologue? The "Lessico dialettale della Svizzera italiana" published by the "CDE - Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia" in Bellinzona who has defined a written system different from other Lombard dialects and collect different varieties of Tessin dialect, or see here. This "official" bureau says that "Ticinese" is a Lombard dialect but has got his own lexicon and his own peculiarities. The radio and the TV uses a local dialect and not the Lombard. The dialect of Tessin has got an official lexicon recognized by the regional administration, an official dictionary, an official "group of study" who has defined gramatical rules etc... can the Tessin dialect has got its own Wikipedia? At moment it is included in the Lombard Wikipedia. --Ilario 17:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

The writing system devised by the CDE (actually at that time the name was "Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana") is deeply rooted in the Western Lombard traditions, amending only awkward solutions and possible ambiguities (not all, unfortunately!). This system is basically adopted by most modern writers in the Western Lombard area, both in CH and IT (with the exception of Milan, where the traditional orthographies still hold stand). In Tessin there is not ONE dialect, but -- as in the rest of the Lombard-speaking area -- MANY different varieties. Anyway, there is a well-established koiné, the so-called 'koiné ticinese' or 'dialètt dala feruvía'. This is the variety used for the lemmatisation in both the VSI and LSI projects. These projects include also the varieties spoken outside Tessin, in the Grisons. The problem is that the valleys Bregaglia and Poschiavo are not geographically contiguous to Tessin, their dialects being closer to those of the Valchiavenna and Valtellina respectively. The choice of a koiné from Tessin has been criticised by speakers from the Grisons, who feel that they have to figure out what a word is in Ticinese in order to look it up in the LSI dictionary --Kemmótar 00:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Some days ago, Ilario asked whether 'the Tessin dialect' can have its own WP. I have already pointed out above that there is no single Tessin dialect, and that the dialects of Tessin can diverge to the extent of being only partially mutually intelligible. There is, anyway, a widely recognised koiné ticinese, something that actually does not have any equivalent on the Italian side of the border. Nevertheless, the difference between the koiné of Tessin and the varieties of the neighbouring areas on the Italian side are only minimal (therefore, I believe that the same koiné could represent also those areas on Italian territory). Actually, I think that opening and running a Ticinese WP would be much easier than a Lombard or even separate Western and Eastern Lombard ones, as many problems wouldn't be an issue any more. The issue of different varieties would still be there (would it be allowed, e.g., to write an article in Upper Leventinese or in the varieties of Claro/Crè or the Calanca?). Besides, we would still have a problem with Bregaglia and Poschiavo, two valleys that are Swiss but not Ticinese. Everything taken into account, I believe there would be fewer conflictual issues in a Ticinese WP. As Ticinese varieties are Western Lombard, it would be a bit awkward to have a Ticinese WP. On the other hand, sociolinguistically speaking, it might be more natural. My main concern is that, due to the relatively small population of Tessin, it might be difficult to have a solid pool of Wikipedians. On the other hand, lombardophony is much more common in Tessin than in Lombardy, and this might make it easier to find contributors. In any case, if a Ticinese WP will ever be started, it would be much more natural for me to migrate to it, as I use the Ticinese koiné. Such a project will have my support.--Kemmótar 03:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC).

I tell you something

After two days and 70 kb, I see that the great majority of the pro votes comes from people that live in Lombardy or Tessin, or have lived, or have relatives living in Lombardy or Tessin. In a few words, they know the matter (the non-existence of a Lombard language).

The great part of the against votes comes from people that, have admitted, don't speak any lombard dialect, don't even speak italian, and so far have seen Lombardy only as a tourist or in a Commons image (FREE). They gave a politic vote (see Bobig) or, as an alternative, say that ISO tells so, or Lombard is spoken by 9 million person (not true, and I know what I'm saying, provided that I live in Lombardy).

This fact makes me think.

Eheheheheh!!!!!!!!! --Remulazz 13:22, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

1. Keep Someone is forgetting that our grandparents are still using this language (my father even wrote a book recently) and sometimes is the only way we can communicate with each other. I really don’t see why someone wants to close a source of information can help us to be in touch with our families and wants to divide generation. -- Xwen 18:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   Our grand parents are using a language that doesn't exist? Strange things happens... --DracoRoboter 18:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

   Ah, so your grandfather actually says Votr podeis aidar Wikimedia a canbiar l mond? Unless you have a Catalan grandfather, please introduce me to him, I want to hear him with my words. Bon Zeenie 12:53, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Note by uninvolved user

Please note a canvassing on cawiki by user:clamengh. Happy editing, Snowolf 21:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually I was wondering why so many Lombard are voting to close lmo.wiki and so many catalans are voting to keep it. --Snowdog 00:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

May I suggest one possible answer? Cf. the quotation about Diglossia (Ferguson's original formulation) farther down...

Btw.: not only Catalans. Also three Norwegians are supporting the Lombard Wikipedia. Maybe because we are used to the coexistence of different dialects and two written standards... --Kemmótar 22:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... Clamengh learnt to use bots also on ca.wiki? --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 16:03, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

For your information: Clamengh's request for bot approval was refused on ca.wiki. --Vriullop 17:05, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

@Vriullop. I didn't want to mean anything: it was just a joke! ;-) --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 15:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

May I ask why? --Snowdog 17:59, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm also curious... --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 15:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

There was no consensus about bot created articles of numbers. --Vriullop 21:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Facts, Literature, Useful links, Quotations, etc.

--Please keep this section together, do not edit within this section--

Quotation:

"The only languages in Europe that are generally known to be in danger of disappearing are the Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland, such as Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic and Welsh. Manx is already extinct, and Cornish died out at the end of the eighteenth century, but was artificially revived and now has a number of speakers. In French Brittany, Breton is spoken. In Scandinavia, several of the Saami (Lappish) languages are seriously endangered or moribund. Not far from Finland, on Russian territory, several small threatened Finno-Ugrian languages are spoken, such as Ingrian, Ludian, Olonetsian, Vepsian, Votian and the large Karelian. The Finno-Ugrian moribund Livonian is found in western Lithuania. [...] In northern Germany, Frisian and Low German, as well as several small surviving Slavic languages such as Kashubian and Sorbian, are on the danger list. Further south in Switzerland and northern Italy, several Rhaeto-Romansh languages are in danger, i.e. Romansch, Ladin and Friulan, as are a number of other Romance languages in Italy (including Sardinia), Albania, Greece, southern France and Spain, such as Ligurian, Lombardian, Piemontese, the four forms of Sardinian, and also Corsican o French Corsica. All these are endangered to some extent, and as are Franco-Provençal and Provençal which are endangered in Italy and seriously endangered in France." [the highlighting in bold is mine] (from: Stephen A. Wurm (ed.), Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing, Barcelona 2001 (Unesco Publishing), ISBN 92-3-103798-6; p. 28-29)

Salminen - UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages: http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html#potentially

Heinrich Schmid and Rumantsch Grischun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schmid

Ivar Aasen and Norwegian Landsmål/Nynorsk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Aasen

Diglossia (Ferguson's original formulation): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/diglossia/node3.html

Quotation:

"In most diglossic languages, the H-variety is thought to be the language; the L-variety is sometimes denied to exist, or is claimed to be only spoken by lesser mortals (servants, women, children). In some traditions (e.g. Shakespeare's plays), L-variety would be used to show certain characters as rustic, comical, uneducated, etc." ( http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/diglossia/node3.html )

Power and Prestige (about diglossic situations): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/diglossia/node2.html#SECTION00011000000000000000

--Kemmótar 00:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

What you say is partly true (indeed, some Italian dialects are used in plays to show certain characters as rustic, comical, uneducated), but in general I say no way! Most Lombard people I know love dialect, and will never deny its existence or claim that "lesser" people can speak it; however they just cannot use it in general so they limit it to particular cases. The usage of dialect varies widely between areas of Italy and Italian Switzerland--it can be completely different if you move by 20 km. I never found a source that accurately describes the way Lombard is used in Lombardia, by Lombard people!

Of course, because the situation can be extremely different between the different areas of the Lombard-speaking territory. In Milan (IT) you can easily find people born in Lombardy from Lombard parents who not only can't speak, but even can't understand Milanese or closely related Lombard varieties. Even in Lugano (CH) you can find people who can't understand Ticinese or closely related Lombard varieties. But the situation is completely different, say, in Bellinzona (CH), Livigno (IT), Airolo (CH), Grosio (IT), etc., where interactions in the local Lombard varieties are a part of daily life. Even children speak the local dialect -- it is indeed transmitted to the next generation! --Kemmótar 19:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I am 3/4 from lombardy, and my 3 grandparents speaking a Lombard language were bilingual (dialect/Italian), and would choose Italian or dialect in different circumstances (differing for each of the 3 grandparents, which hints at the complexity of the situation). I can understand 90% of somebody speaking in Milanese dialect and the (similar but different) Como/Ticino dialects, but I cannot speak any of them; I probably say more often cià, andemm than su, andiamo (come on, let's go). But I am not bilingual, as I could not talk to other people in dialect! There are many jokes in dialect/about dialect, but I (like most people) will tell them in Italian with a dialect punchline.

A real work on a Lombard wikipedia would at the very least separate the two Western/Eastern branches (from en:Lombard language: the union of Western Lombard or Insubric, Eastern Lombard or Orobic and intermediate varieties under the denomination of "Lombard" is simply conventional and not based on linguistic analysis, but on the prevalent diffusion of both in Lombardy region), independent of whatever ISO says. It would be based on well-known grammars and ortography standards (there are some even without Clamengh's innovative work, see en:Western lombard), with policies set before starting the project, and with competent admins that can explain the rules to newcomers, instead of inventing things such as adding an s for plural.

I agree, but only partially. What about the Valtellina? It is Western Lombard, but with such peculiarities (especially in the upper part of the Valtellina) that neither a Western nor an Eastern koiné would be deemed acceptable in most of Valtellina. Should we have one Western Lombard WP, one Eastern Lombard WP, one for the Lower Valtellina and Valchiavenna, one for the so called Contado di Bormio, etc.? Why not ONE, pluralistic Lombard WP where people can write in one of these 'koinai' or in their local variety according to a COMMON set of ortographic rules? ONE Lombard WP, ONE Lombard orthography (rooted in the Lombard and not in the Catalan or Occitan tradition...), MORE varieties. Contact and cooperation with Catalans, Occitans, etc. but NO shared orthography, NO shared lexicon!--Kemmótar 19:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Who decide which is the common set of orthographic rules to use? If articles can be written in any variety of the lombard language, can you explain why a thing called "Lombard souradialectal" has been invented? And why the vast majority of the (so-called) "articles" of lmo.wiki are written in this invented "Lombard souradialectal"? --Snowdog 19:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer to your first question: it is desirable that it could be done by a linguist or a group of linguists, possibly native speakers. As to the second question, the one about "Lombard souradialectal". I know that this proposal, defended by some scholars, is based on a huge amount of serious research and knowledge not only of the Lombard varieties in question but also of modern linguistics. Although I have deep respect for the amount of study lying behind that proposal, I do not agree -- and I have never made any mystery of my view. To make a rather complicate matter short and somewhat oversimplified, I could say that I do not agree because the "Lombard souradialectal" proposal strives to define a koiné... without defining it. In other words, the whole job of creating a koiné is left to the orthographic system ("we all write in the same way but pronounce it differently"), with the inevitable consequence of a deep cleavage between writing and pronunciation. To some limited extent, some supradialectal solutions may be inevitable (as the use of 'ë' for a vowel pronounced 'a' in some dialects and 'e' in others), but not to the extent required by "Lombard souradialectal".--Kemmótar 00:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Despite being based on a huge amount of serious research and knowledge, I wasn't able to find on the Internet, any information on Lombard souradialectal. Can someone provide some references? --Snowdog 02:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I think there should be an article in BSAV - Bollettino della Centro Studi Storici Alta Valtellina, 2007. NBNB: not to be confused with a phonetically based proposal published in BSAV 6/2003 by a different author.--Kemmótar 02:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that Clamengh and the other lmo oligarchs are not making a good service to the language by creating pages like lmo:United States. Bon Zeenie 09:07, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with Bon Zeenie. None of us (from Lombardy, btw) is saying that in Lombardy everybody speaks only Italian. The truth is that there are plenty of dialects that a lot of people can understand (I would say 30% of that 9million), but very few people can speak (5%?) or (fewer) write. The real problem is that this plenty of dialects (that official studies want to gather as one unique language) sounds (I'm not an expert, for me they simply sound) very different. The best thing would be to create several different Wikipedias, at least the two suggested by Bon Zeenie. The worst, instead, is to create a new language mixing Occitan, Catalan and other Romance stuff and call it Lombard. --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 16:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts

SIL, ISO, Ethnologue and UNESCO are "so important and famous to be considered as reliable". Well, Ethnologue credit Lombard with a bit more than 9,000,000 speakers [16], while UNESCO says Lombard is a "potentially endangered language" and maybe it would be necessary to move it in the "endangered languages" group [17]. Ethnologue and UNESCO are so important and famous, and we trust them.

On the other hand, according to Ethnologue, finnish language has a bit more than 5,000,000 speakers [18], but according to UNESCO, finnish isn't an endangered language [19]. Ethnologue and UNESCO are so important and famous, and we trust them.

Danish. 5,3 million speakers [20], not endangered!

So how comes that a language with 9 million speakers is endangered? It's quite simple. What Ethnologue count as speakers are just people living in Lombardy and Tessin (actually 9,8 million). User Belinzona in his comment said "... according to recent studies on the matter the rate of analphabetism is 98 percent." I guess this means that only 2% (roughly 200,000) are able to speak AND write in Lombard (and when it comes to writing an encyclopedia, being able to write has its importance).

NB: a language is endangered if it is not transmitted to the next generation!--Kemmótar 19:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Statistics are particularly problematic in this case, and actually there is no reliable survey (encompassing both Switzerland and Italy) about how many people know/use some Lombard variety . The number of users can be calculated from Swiss census data (I did it, actually, a year ago). In the Swiss census, people were asked which variety/-ies they used in different social settings, making a distinction between Italian, French, German, Alemannic, Lombard, Rumansch, etc. In the Italian censuses, the variable was just 'dialect', not specifying which dialect. From the Italian Census data it is therefore impossible to say, for example, if a person living in Milan and stating that he/she speaks 'dialect' at home, actually speaks a Lombard dialect, or - say - a Venetian, Apulian, Piedmontese, etc. dialect.--Kemmótar 17:11, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

So we are down from 9 million to 200,000. Ok, let's make it 400,000.

Icelandic. 240,000 speakers [21], not endangered!!!

Things may be a little different in Switzerland, but in Lombardy people use Italian, and Lombard is relegated to colloquial use with familiy and friends. A spoken language, but hardly a written one.

The biggest problem of Lombard is that it has no official recognition. This means for example that it is not taught in schools (while Iclandic is), no laws are written in Lombard, if you write your curriculum vitae in Lombard it will be send directly to the trash bin. And Lombard doesn't have an "official" orthography. This makes things difficult when you expect a lot of people to write an encyclopedia collaboratively.

Still it might be interesting to have a Wikipedia in Lombard (Or maybe better, at least two Wikipedias, one in Western L. and one in Eastern L.). I would be glad to see a "renaissance" of the language of the region where I was born, I've grown, and I still live.

Compared with Piedmont and Veneto, the Lombard area (i.e. Tessin + the 4 valleys in the Grisons in CH and most of the Lombardy region in IT) in the past centuries has not had a politically and culturally unifying centre like Turin and Venice respectively. Milan did not play the same role. 'Piedmontese' is often identified with 'Turinese', and 'Veneto' with 'Venetian', cf. the Wikipedias in question. 'Lombard' cannot be identified with 'Milanese' in the same way. The Lombard area is even politically divided between two sovereign states (and in the past the sovereign states were even more...). The Lombard area has an amazing richness of varieties, but this richness turns out to be also its weakness. This makes things more difficult than for its Western and Eastern neighbours when it comes to the preservation and consolidation of Lombard. And this can also explain, at least in part, why it is easier to write a Wikipedia in Piedmontese/Turinese or Veneto/Venetian. You say that you "would be glad to see a "renaissance" of the language of the region where I was born, I've grown, and I still live". I would be glad to see at least its survival. Every language variety that is lost is a loss for the whole of humanity, not only because of the cultural implications, but also because we lose important data that can help us to a better understanding of 'language' as a human activity.--Kemmótar 01:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Q: What we need to revitalize this potentially endangered language?

A: A "somehow official" orthography, recognized by some kind of institution. This means that I dont consider as an option the yet to be published etymological orthography ORS, especially because this is not Citizendium, and I have no idea which titles has Clamengh to build up an orthography and say: "Let's use this!". As much as we are not a primary source of content, we should not be a primary source of orthographies.

The adoption of the CDE orthography might be a solution. After all, CDE is an official institution--Kemmótar 17:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Q: What we DO NOT need to revitalize this potentially endangered language?

A: We don't need a wiki where at least 95% of its articles are:

1. writen in languages different from Lombard
2. taken from other wikis and lacking the templates they had in their original wiki
3. edited by bot

100% agree! But, still, I would rather have the Lombard Wikipedia radically reformed rather than closed.--Kemmótar 17:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

And just in case it is not clear, my opinion is "close down this monster, for heaven's sake!" --Snowdog 01:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, it has to be said that we have wikis for oter languages/dialects spoken in Italy. Two noteworthy examples are venetian (vec) and piedmontese (pms). For those who dont know, Piedmont lies west of Lombardy, and Veneto is east of Lombardy. If this supposed attack against Lombard is motivated by some political agenda, vec.wiki and pms.wiki would be targeted as well.

Truth is that lmo.wiki, pms.wiki and vec.wiki have all been created at least 2 years ago. In this period pms.wiki and vec.wiki have been able to build a community that is able to write articles like this or [22] (both created recently). Lmo.wiki has bots instead of users, and if I would be able to write a good article in Lombard I will ask myself: "Why should I have to waste time writing an article destined to be dispersed in an ocean of bot-generated trash?" --Snowdog 11:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

A mere 'technical' or 'practical' problem, since am a bit confused about who's writing what: is the whole section "My thoughts" written by Snowdog (apart from the comments signed by others)? Snowdog, can you please confirm?--Kemmótar 16:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes. --Snowdog 10:31, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Can the Lombardists become good Wiki-citizens?

I don't necessarily want LMO:WP closed. I would prefer that the Lombardists become good Wikimedia citizens. However, currently they are misusing Wikimedia resources, and if they do not change their bad habits, they should be closed for that reason.

I am active on the Esperanto Wiki, and as an Esperantist, we try to champion the rights of all languages, not just our own. (See en:Manifesto de Prago at [23].) I am in the camp that I don't want lmo:wp to be closed down. However, I am rather shocked that -- after the Lombard community has been criticized for artificially inflating their numbers with junk and stuff from other languages, they still continue to do it. Do you have no shame?

Do you want to make a wiki in your mother-tongue? Wonderful. But don't do it artificially or dirty Wikipedia to make a political point. Don't copy stuff out of other languages and then be too lazy to translate them. Don't create empty pages just for the sake of article-count. And don't keep adding garbage after we tell you that you are doing it.

This wiki should be trimmed down back to its roots. Lombard community: Read this very carefully. You would be doing yourself a big favor by deleting all of your #@#!@ garbage -- every last article created by Blamengh and your other bots -- apologizing to the Wikimedia community for abuse of number-inflation, and start working on List of articles every Wikipedia should have.

I would like some acknowledgement that the Wiki is in terrible shape, and positive steps shown to correct it. If you do this, I will vote to keep lmo:wp with pleasure. If you do not do this, I see myself voting for deletion: Only because the Lombard-Wikipedians have filled their wiki with garbage, and show no signs of ever wanting to clean house.

Lombardists, you are not an island; you are a part of the Wikimedia community, and if you do not play fair and act as a good Wikipedia citizen your rights here will be removed. You will be able to inflate your numbers at Wikia.com and throw in as much trash as you want. -- Yekrats 08:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

1000 good articles in Lombard are much better than 100 000 articles with garbage!--Kemmótar 19:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Next question could be: Can the italianists become good Wiki-citizens?

Reading the page, many of the aggressors of the Lombard Wiki are members of the italin Wiki. Also almost 2 sysop of the italian Wiki. They are aggressives and they use this page as a Forum.

So, have we to close the italian Wikipedia ? -- Aprilx 12:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe because the Italians know what they're speaking about?? Let me remind you that the proponent, Remulazz, wrote some of the few non-bot-generated articles in lmo.wiki, lmo:Chímica. Bon Zeenie 12:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

So, a you saying that some italian (48 ath the max) (and the italian sysops) could be aggressives versus the Lombard Wiki, and they could use this discussion page as a Forum, only because they think to know what they're speaking about? -- Aprilx 13:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

If you think we're using the discussion page as a forum, and if other people think that we Italians are misusing this page, I'm sorry. However, yes, I think we are qualified to be aggressive versus the lmo wiki. Everybody, not just Italians, can be aggressive, as much as the lmo sysops are being aggressive by:

1) twisting the concept of language wikipedias, first by putting two languages in a single wikipedia (western and eastern) and after some years by inventing their own language (the one used for the donation banner) and ortography (which is original research).

2) inflating the number of pages in the invented languages with bots that import pages from other wikipedias without even translating them, and classify them as lumbard souradialectal or wtf they are calling their invented language

3) completely disregarding the idea that a wikipedia is built by a community, and building a wikipedia by themselves

4) using plainly wrong sources (Ethnologue is completely messing up the statistics, mentioning 9 million speakers for an endangered language???) to give substance to their original research.

Note that nothing of this is done by the pms and vec wiki communities.

I'll draw an interesting parallel; an ortography debate was also what caused the Belarusian wikipedia schism, and is one of the things that are contested here. That the people who noticed the fact in this case are all Italian wikipedians, it is to be expected since Italian is a national language in the areas where lombard languages (note the plural) are spoken.

To sum up, I don't know if it is possible to build a lombard language wikipedia. Some Italian wikipedians say yes, some say no. But all agree that if this is the case, it must restart from scratch; it would probably be much more fruitful and interesting IMHO to have a good lombard wikisource (since the language was written only in the works of people like en:Carlo Porta), and good grammar wikibooks in English or Italian (which should however be a secondary source, i.e. wikibooks built according to wikipedia's strict guidelines agains original research!). But that's another story. Bon Zeenie 14:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

AprilX, leave the Italian Wikipedia out of this. As far as I can tell, they are being good Wikipedians. I was speaking solely about the QUALITY of the Lombard Wikipedia. Please leave your nationalism out of it. To put it quite frankly, the Lombard Wikipedia is the worst Wikipedia I have ever seen. Having faux content not only makes your Wikipedia look bad, it also makes the Lombard language look bad. If you are proud of your mother tongue, this is a poor way to show it. Your Wiki is an embarrassment. -- Yekrats 14:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry for your role of "advocat", Yekrats, but in this discussion page there are the proves that you aren't right. The italian wikipedians attacked everyone voted "Keep" and they were very aggressives (also the italian sysops, almost 2). And they used that discussion page as a Forum (also the sysops).

And now what do you want do : Do you want to propose to close the Italian Wikipedia ?, -- Aprilx 16:30, 30 November 2007 (UTC))

Sorry but in discussion pages people are supposed to discuss. And a good starting point is reply to criticism with facts. Something that actually you are not doing. --Snowdog 16:56, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't want to close the Italian Wikipedia. Why? When I click on a random article, it is in Italian. Sometimes it's a good article. There are robot-created articles there, yes. But it is in the Italian language. The templates are in order. This is not uncommon in any Wikipedia. Aprilx, you want to make it a political issue with me, but I don't care about your politics. I care about quality of Wikipedia. This "quality problem" seems to be something that scares you (as it does all of the members of the Lombard Wikipedia community) because you aggressively guide the conversation towards "oppression!" "racism!" You avoid any mention of the real problem here: The quality of your Wikipedia is disgusting! Fix it! Delete all of your robot garbage! -- Yekrats 17:40, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Strong support to the deletion of all robot garbage!--Kemmótar 01:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Support, but deletion is not enough (moreover, I don't see any admin -like you- deleting them, at the moment).

I have deleted a few articles, but what are 10 or 20 articles against the thousands that probably should be deleted? Actually I wouldn't describe it as a motivating job for a human to delete tens of 'number articles'... This process should be automated. Those users who have created such Bots should contribute ASAP by creating a 'deleting Bot' to do the job. Some criteria should be agreed upon defining which articles should be deleted, but we could start with the 'number articles' containing no information... --Kemmótar 23:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The project must be closed above all because there is no community. A new opening request can be made later, to verify if the projects has the right requirements to be opened. As far as I can see, as I said above, today lmo.wiki opening request would be rejected. So, deletion of bot entries is the solution to one problem, and we can't forget the others. The project must be restarted. --Tooby 18:57, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Putting things into perspective

To put things into perspective: There does not seem to be a great amount of activity at the Lombard Wikipedia when they do not run their bots. Yesterday was one of those days. I counted that yesterday there were 26 edits in the article namespace: 25 of which were either robot or interwiki edits. The one lone other edit was in lmo:United States which deleted some misplaced DIV tags that didn't show on the screen anyway. So, during the entire day of 29 November, no substantial edits were made by the Lombard community. If you want to save the Lombard wikipedia, you would do better to start working THERE to improve your Wikipedia, instead of wasting time attacking me HERE about political issues. -- Yekrats 17:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Some interesting links to improve the perspective

I'd like to add a link, useful to understand the proposals of some lmo.wiki users. I'm going to translate it in the next days:

• Here. Here 10caart proposes Clamengh as a linguist to create a mix of lombard dialects to be used on service pages. Please notice the vote of Flavi, Clamengh and OlBergomi, where they admit that somebody have to elaborate a new language (they called it Koyne Lumbarda).

What does the word Koyne mean? -- Yekrats 00:24, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

'komuna dialekto', 'lingvo, kiu estis dialekto kaj igxis interlingvo'. http://www.reta-vortaro.de/revo/art/kojne.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language Cf.: Petrini, Dario: La koinè ticinese (Romanica Helvetica vol. 105), Bern 1988.--Kemmótar 00:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

>de mariorix (mario righi) Chiu tiu afero estas nekredebla. Tio ne estas simpla kritiko al Lombarda Wiki kaj al laborantoj al tiu projekto. Tiu chi estas tribunala proceso al Lombarda lingvo aw al la ekzistado de Lombarda lingvo. Mi komprenas nun. Tiu chi estas atako tute klara al tiuj homoj kiuj konsideras sin Lombardoj. Kaj la malbono estas ke (se bone mi komprenas), apartenas al Itala Wiki. Mi estas denaska (aw preskaw, esperantisto, mia edzino estas Chinino el Guangzhou kaj nia taga lingvo estas Esperanto) Shia unua lingvo estas la Kantona kaj mia unua lingvo estas la Lombarda. La Kantona lingvo estas duonoficiala en Kantonurbo, Makaw kaj Hongkongo. Sed 80 milionoj da Homoj parolas tiun chi lingvon, kvankam ghi havas variajhojn (kiel choij lingvoj de la mondo) Sed la homoj bone scias ke ili estas parolantaj la Kantonan lingvon (ke stulta Shtato donas al ghi la nomon "dialekto"-n. Mia eks edzino estis Rustatara kaj vivis duonon de sia vivo en Ukrainio. Kvankam shi estis esperantistino ni uzis la rusan lingvon kiel taga lingvo. Shi tute ne konis Ukrainan lingvon. En la Konsulejo de Ukrainio shi ne povis bone kompreni la dokumentojn char skribitaj en la Ukraina. Do shi havis grandan konfuzan opinion rilate al chi tiu lingvo.Same la italaj "agresantoj" al Lombarda Wiki. Ili ne amas aliajn lingvojn krom la propra Itala lingvo kaj, mi vidas ke ili simpatias por oficialajn lingvojn. Ili pretas akordigi rajton al Nynorsk char oficiala sed por ili ne ekzistas neoficiala komprenilo. Mi legas ke:The approach to some subjects does not correspond to the vision of Lomard culture. Do, ekzistas lombarda kulturo. Some neologisms are completely invented: Okeje, ankaw en itala lingvo (kaj en aliaj lingvoj): Ei fu, velivolo estas sensencaj vortoj.Without motivation? Chiutage mi estas bombardita de vortoj sensencaj en angla lingvo: kiel: -weekend -rai educational -welfare -establishment -waffa-day, election-day, family-day etcaetera But the Italian (nd Lombard term exist indeed!!!!) Lombard can't be considered an only language. Ok. Mi kaj chiuj miaj familianoj de Lombardio (kiuj precipe loghas che la landlimo de Rivero Adda) en Inzago/Inzaach Chiam komprenis ke preter la rivero loghas alian popolon kaj parolas alian lingvon. el Bergamasch (ke hodiaw ni donas la nomon de Orobika popolo (kun Brescia/Breha, Cremuna e Le Giudicarie. Ech en la pasita jarcento(Biondelli, Gabriele Rosa ed Forni). oni skribis ke en Lombardio vivis du popoloj: la Okcidenta (Insubroj) kaj la Orienta. Mi kiel bestoprotektanto kaj ekologiisto estis chiam prapata fare de la chiasistoj kaj fare de la produktantoj de armiloj. Ili (la orientanoj) apartenas al alia "kulturo" ankaw rilate al la Naturo.Sed tio estas normala situacio! Apulio havas, ankaw ghi, du grandajn popolojn La apulianoj kaj la salentanoj.Krom aliaj malgrandaj popoloj kiel la Harpianoj de celle kaj Faeto, La Tarantanoj kiuj lingvas kiel Materanoj. La Grikoj, la Albanoj. Kaj tio kion signifas? Certe richeco, certe ankaw historie (kiel Lombardio), diversaj popoloj vivis tie (la Mesapoj kaj la Dawnoj). Chi tie en Lombardio vivis la Cenomaj oriente kaj la Insubroj en Okcidento. Sed iom post iom kelkaj homoj ekvidis ke ekzistas komuna bazo por chiuj lingvoj de Norda Italio, inkluzive la Retoj kaj la Venetoj. Kaj tiuj homoj pensas ke estas bona afero ke yiuj antikvaj ligoj revivighos. Mi vidas ke ankaw aliaj popoloj lastatempe akiras konscion pri ilia origino. La Sicilanoj kun la Salentanoj. La Sanita gruparo vidas en la Napola ilon komunan al eks Sanitaj popoloj kaj vidas en la lingvo la unuan unuighilon. En Lombardio ekzistas aliaj teritorioj kiuj havas malfacilan lokigon Mantovo (chu Emilia?) Bormio/Burmi, eble Alporobika. Bustigrandi/Busto,Galaraa/Gallarate kaj Lenjan/Legnano, certe de origino Ligura (ol foeugu)Sama afero por Valleventina=Lepontina. La Valbregaja, certe eks Ladina. Vughera/Voghera eble Piemonta, tiel estas ankaw por Lomellina/Lumelina kaj Avgjeven/Vigevano. Ankaw mia koro estas en Katalunio, tio estis por mi Skolo pri etnio. Mi estis en malliberejo dum Frankismo char mi skribis Visca Catalunya Lliure sur la muroj de Barcelono kun la A de Anarkio. Ankaw la kataluna lingvo do ne ekzistas. Imagu ke en Balearaj Insuloj oni dira es, s', sa anstataw el,l',els, les kiam mi parolas katalune mi chiam uzas lo anstataw el. En Valenca Provinco la sama/malsameta Kataluna estas konsiderita "dialekto" de la Hispana!!!. Akana lingvo. Mi chiam parolis pri Twi sed mi lernis ke ghi sinonimas al Akan Kiam mi ne eblas trovi vorton en Twi/Akan mi uzas la Hawsan char en la Nordo de Ganao kaj de Eburbordo oni konas ghin. Sed Akan, Twi, Ashante...estas variajhoj de sama lingvo kies grupo estas KWA. Same kun Fon kaj Ewe. Do, la grupigo aw disigo de toij lingvoj estas nur politika fakto,kiel la malapero de Lombarda Wiki. Eble favore aw malfavore vochdonos homoj kiuj ne konas bone la problemon, nur por simpatiaj aw malsimpatiaj kialoj. Eble homoj kiuj naskighis en Ganao, eble de alia teritorio de Ganao vochdonas kontraw la lingvon favore de Hawsa aw de Angla lingvo(La unuaj malamikoj de Afriko estas la afrikanoj mem kiuj kredas sin Ewropanoj aw de la Etnio pli forta. Dum mia patrino diris "fragula" e "pisej/pizej" mi lernis magjustra-magjuster - herbijun Same estis en Katalunio. Lingvo revivighis en mi chu nature aw artefarite, ne gravas.Kiam mi parolasla Insubran mi chiam uzas nun tiuj vortoj. Mi skribis en Insubra lombarda antaw 40 jaroj en la 68aj jaroj. Mi skribis El Pruletari Lumbard kaj Tiremm Innanz kaj mi kreis paperblogon kies nomo estis "El Gjurnal del Mariu, kvarlingva gazeto sen dato en kiu mi invitis fari la samon.M skribis gramatikon en la itala, porlerni la lombardan, (impara la tua lingua madre, contro il rincoglionimento dello stato) kaj poste mi skribis en la italan kaj alian en esperanto, Libertà d'Etnia en kiu mi metis mapojn de la diversaj etnioj de Ewropo. Inter la cent libroj ke nun mi skribis (60% en esperanto pri diversaj lingvoj) lalasta estas Lunbardt Insueber-Zingher Caldarar 230 paghoj kun vortaro kaj etimologia vortaro, historio dela ciganoj, antawe mi faris en esperanto pri la Erli-bulgaraj ciganoj, pri la Cosenza-RRomkaj pri la Xoraxane'.Mi skribis Vucabulari Lunbardt Napulitan, ktp.Mi esperas ke kiam mi ebligos funkcigi blogojn.mi metos ilin enen (rigardu por la momento Nireblog Mirinda Mondo Saocia, Kultura kaj Media Ekologio kaj Marioblogo kiu estas mia persona blogo. Ni devas nur danki Clamengh kiu kapablis krei per sia forto klopodon kaj alia vojo por ami niajn kulturojn. permesu lin labori trankvile, Dankon al chiuj por via laboro, sendube valora. Preskaw lombardoj, se vi ne volas okupighi de tio faru alion (datevi all'ippica ciao, Per un mundt de fradej, de pas e lauraa el marjurix

why write this in esperanto? Anyone, I could translate the beginning where it says "This is not simply a critique to the lmo wiki and to people who work on it. This is a court case against Lombard language and its very existence." Well, you are misunderstood. People are not saying that there is no language in Lombardy other than Italian. They are saying that (as expressed in en:Lombard language) the union of Western Lombard or Insubric, Eastern Lombard or Orobic and intermediate varieties under the denomination of "Lombard" is simply conventional. In this sense there is no single Lombard language, but a family/continuum of (not necessarily mutually intelligible) dialects. Bon Zeenie 09:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It comes from a native Esperantist. Here's a translation of the first paragraph.: This affair is incredible. That isn't a simple critique towards the Lombard Wiki to the workers of that project. This is a tribunal trial to the Lombard language or to the existance of the Lombard language. I understand now. This is an attack totally clear to those who consider themselves Lombards. And the terrible thing is that (if I understand right) separate to the Italian Wiki. I am a native (or almost native) Esperantist; my wife is Chinese from Guangzhou and our everyday language is Esperanto. Her native language is Cantonese and mine is Lombard. Cantonese is a half-official language of Canton City, Macau, and Hong Kong. But 80 milion people speak this language, although it has variations (like all languages of the world). But people well know that they are speaking Cantonese. (The stupid State calls it a "dialect".) My ex-wife is "Rustatarian" (?) and lived half of her life in Ukraine. Although she was Esperantist, we used Russion as a daily language. She totally did not know the Ukrainian language. In the Ukrainian Consulate, she couldn't understand the documents very well, because they were written in Ukrainian. So she had a very confused opinion related to this language. Similarly the Italian aggressors towards that Lombard Wiki. They do not like other languages besides their own Italian, and I see that they are sympathetic towards an official language. They are ready to make an agreement to Nynorsk (?) because for them there does not exist unofficial tool for understanding. -- Yekrats 16:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

They do not like other languages besides their own Italian, and I see that they are sympathetic towards an official language.

 ::straw man fallacy and

Proof by verbosity --DracoRoboter 20:02, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Massì, una persona con una certa cultura capice chiaramente l'esperanto. Ho spiegato che ne ho abbastanza della lingua degli anglosassoni utililizzata impropriamente in tutte le salse, abusivamente, ogni giorno devo utilizzarla e vedo che chi parla italiano lo travolge tranquillamente. La settimana scorsa ho avuto un travaso di bile perché in un convegno di tecnici italiani è stato affibbiato il nome di Technology Day (mi è venuto in mente il Waffa Day, ecc). Un povero giapponese che è da noi non riesce ad imparare l'italiano perché gli imbottiscono le orecchie e il cervello con un inglese ridicolo. E' un veicolo utile ma globalizzante che allontana da ogni approfondimento culturale verso altri popoli. Quando portavo la gente nei paesi Baltici i miei turisti si stupivano perché i locali non capivano il loro rozzo inglese. E'la lingua padronale. Non una volta sola ho sentito dire che "inutile perdere tempo con il dialetto, bisogna imparare l'inglese!" ome se una cosa escludesse l'altra. Quando cade un aereo penso subito alle incomprensioni tra torri di controllo e "velivoli".(vedi Linate crash down". Insomma io amo l'inglese (vengo dallo IULM, e l'ho avuto come prima lingua. Ho lavorato al King's College di Londra e in tutti gli USA a fare fiere. Ma dove posso lo evito. La questione del Keep e Close per il sito Lombardo è pazzesco. Non reputo onesto promuovere un qualsivoglia referendum su questioni etnico-linguistiche almeno per permettere all'ultimo parlante di morire tranquillamente senza angoscie. La cosa che vedo gravissima è che un gruppo di italiano e molti di residenza o nascita lombardasi scagliano o commentano in modo molto antipatico chi vota Keep. E che qui non si mette alla berlina il lavoro di Clamengh (che peraltro non conosco) ma l'esistenza stessa del Lombardo. che, ripeto 40 anni fa(prima del Bossi) , per inseegnamento catalano, e per aver conosciutopersone Meravigliose come Tavo Burat (Gustavo Buratti). Ilmio amore per l'Italia mi ha spinto a cercare etnie e lingue in ogni angolo. e l'Italia non è un Paese diverso dagli altri. E' fattoo di popoli e lingue diverse e niente affattoo dialetti dell'Italiano. Ho imparato le lingue sarde, il napoletano (lingua della città di Napoli e diffusa come lingua franca nei territori non esperidi (Siciliano, Calabro-meridionale e piuttosto accettato in Salento) dove per es. un Modugno un Arbore sanniti ma non napoletani, lo utilizzano. La Sicilia che ho vissuto profondamente fina a parrari sicilianu e dove hanno una coscienza di essere siciliani. Mentre in tutte le etnie del nord, compreso i lombardi credono di parlare genericamente un "dialett/dialeto" esattamente come nelle terre d'OC sono convinti di usare un patois e anche a Valenzia la gente non sa neanche cosa sta parlando. Insomma fa testo ciò che la TV docet e, qundo senti un ex presidente del consiglio delle libertà affermare in campagna elettorale che bisogna estirpare il dialetto e insegnare inglese e informatica mi viene la repulsa verso tutti e tre : presidente, inglese e informatica. Poi in fondo l'ho a male solo col presidente.perché (forse) sa quello che dice. Ecula, mi sun dree a vedè de la gjent che la voeur fà foeura la me lengua e la me cultura, el ghe n quejvun che voeur laurà per unifegà i du lunbardt? Ok lasìl laurà quijet, dizevi che dopu d'avech tacà el sit Lumbard el tucarà a dij ulter/alter sit, magara l'Uçitan/Occitan, perchee anca quest l'e minga trop minga artifiçjal. saluedi, rengraçi per avech daa a trà el marjurix (mariorix-mario righi)

A written tradition

An important point which the tenants of the so-called "Lombard" neglect is the existence of a rich written tradition of at least some of the most important Lombard dialects. Above all Milanese, which has a long established literary tradition tracing back to the ancient Bosinadas (16th Century) and often included in its literature works in "sub-dialects" ("parlate o subdialetti del dialetto milanese (...): Varesotto, Bassone, Monzese, Brianteo e Valsassinese, ai quali devesi aggiungere il Ticinese, di poco diverso dal Comasco...": so Ferdinando Fontana, author of an important Antologia Meneghina, Bellinzona 1901). As a matter of fact, the city of Milan has always been a cultural reference for the dialects of western Lombardy (and eastern Piedmont). And Milanese is written in a very different way from the method invented by the "Lombard wikipedians". My impression, as a Lombard and a Milanese, is that:

• those who speak of "Lombard" do so in order to avoid the word "Milanese" (probably they are not inclined to accept the historically established literary supremacy of "Milanese", or simply ignore it);
• the orthography they use tends to diverge from the commonly accepted Milanese standard not only in order to avoid every reference to Milanese, but also in order to emphasize the differences between the Lombard dialects and Italian. As a matter of fact, the established Milanese writing is much nearer to the Italian writing. For instance, the title of the Milanese anthem should be written out O mia bella Madonnina quite as in Italian, even if the pronounciation is different (probably the "Lombard" wikipedians would spell it o mia bèla madunina).

Not only the Wikipedians: that would actually be the spelling adopted by most 'dialect writers' of prose and poetry outside Milan, of many dictionaries and grammars (cfr. those of the varieties of Lecco, Samolaco, Grosio, Tirano, Teglio, Airolo, Barni, Mendrisio etc.) and -- last but not least -- of the CDE! (I am not saying all those orthographies are identical, but they would at least agree on how to write the title of that song). The reason why the traditional orthography of Milanese works rather well with Milanese but not with other varieties lies in the peculiarities of the Milanese phonological system (vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, etc.). NBNB, in order to avoid misunderstandings: I am not speaking of the 'catalanising' spelling, that I reject as a viable alternative for writing Lombard varieties --Kemmótar 02:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The result, for cultivated Lombards, is the image of a poor, badly written improvised language, which is quite the opposite of the rich and refined language we know and love. That's why I'm against the Lombard wiki: not because of hatred of my mother-tongue but because I love it and cannot endure seeing it brought to such a sorry plight. --Vermondo 00:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a question from an 'uncultivated' phonetician and phonologist: why should we write geminates in "O mia bella Madonnina" when they are not actually pronounced (as the syllable structure of Milanese does not allow it in those positions)? I understand that Milanese has such a long and established orthographic tradition that leaving it even for a more rational orthography would not be acceptable by many users. But that orthography cannot be imposed on other varieties--Kemmótar 02:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't answer, but the answer could be that we should start with a good lmo.wikisource and use it as a playground to establish the rules for the wikipedia (since on wikisource there's much less leeway for ortography etc.).

The geminated writing is a way of marking an open (low) pronounciation of the preceding vowel, if stressed. So a writing bella points to IPA ['bɛla] and not *['be:la].

I know. But this works for Milanese because of its phonology, not for other varieties (what you call 'sub-dialects'.--Kemmótar 12:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, with unstressed vowels gemination doesn't mean opening, but has only "etimological" reasons. Anyway, madonnina is easily recognizable as a word connected with donna ['dɔna]. The orthography you don't like has been de facto imposed by the existence of an imposing mass of milanese written literature, which is much greater than the other sub-dialects' one. If you want to trash all this heritage and invent something else, you cannot hope that I follow you.

No, as far as Milanese is concerned, the existing, well-established tradition cannot be ignored! But neither should be ignored the fact that today, in 2007, the areas where Lombard varieties are most vital is not Milan but the other areas where 'sub-dialects' are spoken.

Besides, just as an example, also Norway has an imposing mass of literature, but the orthography of both Norwegian written standards has nevertheless undergone various reforms. --Kemmótar 12:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

(As far as the CDE is concerned —I suppose you are speaking of the Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia di Bellinzona— I understand that a linguistic research centre uses a phonetic transcription, but orthography of a written language is something else.) --Vermondo 10:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I am speaking of the so-called 'trascrizione in lingua corrente'. The CDE no loger uses a strictly phonetic transcription (as was the case for example in the first volumes in the DOSI - Documenti orali della Svizzera italiana series).--Kemmótar 12:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sick of this

I'm sick of being called names by people who vote "Keep" without taking time to click "Random article" 10 times on lmo.wiki. I can stand being called a fascist and a nationalist by Clamengh and 10caart, butnot from people that don't clearly know anything about the linguistic status of Northern Italy, who vote "Keep" just to because they think a priori that "Close" votes are fascist and nationalist. Even ifthe people voting called calling milanese/bergamasque/lombard/wtf the"language of their grandparents". Bon Zeenie 09:28, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, nobody should call you a fascist or racist based on this discussion. Also, however, those of us who are outside the political borders of Italy should be allowed to wonder why it is that so many Italians want so badly to shut down the project rather than repairing it (which it definitely needs). If it is a disqualification to any degree to be from elsewhere, then it would make no sense to do this process here on Meta; it could just be dealt with on the Italian Wikipedia instead. See my point? :] It is part of the nature of a request on Meta that "outsiders" throw in their views as well. When emotions are running a bit high here, it would be much better to try to reconcile and find common ground rather than trying to top of the other party's language by stronger words or threats. Best regards from another Norwegian linguist and admin on a minority-language Wikipedia which had a vey difficult birth under somewhat similar circumstances as the Lombardian one. -- Olve 14:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we can start a milanese or bergamasco wikipedia.

— DracoRoboter 17:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

First thing I wrote here (before kemmontar says something similar). Open some brand new 'pedia in a real language, and clean that waste can called lmo. DracoRoboter 14:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Could you explain, please? --Kemmótar 23:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Which part of "start a milanese or bergamasco wikipedia" is not clear? You said west and east lombard 'pedia. It's quite the same thing if I well undertood . A real language is, for example, a language whose ortography was written by Cherubini not by a mostly unknow clamenengh, and had some literature written by Porta. DracoRoboter 01:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

What is a little unclear to me is "First thing I wrote here (before kemmontar says something similar)" -- do you mean that you agree with me or not? Incidentally, there is a (rather old) article by Beretta or Isella about the history of Milanese orthography.--Kemmótar 12:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Da capo (e in italiano visto che altrimenti diventa difficile):

• l'articolo del beretta nulla c'entra (e nulla mi cale al momento)
• lmo è in questo momento è un cestino dei rifiuti
• il milanese è una lingua, e sarei d'accordo ad aprire una wikipedia in milanese
• del bergamasco e delle altre lingue presenti in lombardia poco so, immagino che valga la stessa cosa che per il milanese
• la tua proposta del dividere in più versioni va nella direzione giusta anche se è parecchio perfettibile
• al momento sto lavorando sia all'esterno di lmo (chiedendo di chiudere questa schifezza) sia all'interno (cercando di riformarla) sperando che almeno una delle due tattiche funzioni.
• decidi da solo se sono o meno d'accordo con te.

DracoRoboter 14:17, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

In genere cerco di rispondere sempre nella lingua della domanda, in questo caso quindi in IT. I will be glad to translate this contribution on request.

- articolo del Beretta (ma non sono sicuro che sia suo): era per dire che la questione della grafia milanese, anche dal punto di vista storico, è complessa. Con tutto il rispetto per il Cherubini, che ho addirittura in 2 edizioni.

- cestino di rifiuti: con dentro qualche oggetto di valore, che però tra i vari rifiuti si va a rischio di perdere.

- milanese: non sono milanese, questa è una questione che devono decidere i milanesi. Però la distanza tra koiné ticinese e milanese è minima, in prospettiva.

- dividere: non ho il facit per le risposte, lo so che è perfettibile, mi fa piacere scambiare idee, ascoltare quelle degli altri ma anche essere ascoltato (NB: ascoltare a volte implica poi condividere, a volte no).

- interno vs. esterno / riformare vs. chiudere: suppongo una delle tattiche sia la tua prima priorità, l'altra la seconda. Quale è quale?--Kemmótar 16:10, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

(del resto sarà meglio discutere nella tua talk in lmo, rispondo solo all'ultimo punto) Dipende come vanno le cose su lmo: se ad un certo punto mi sembrerà riformabile cambierò anche il mio voto qui. Al momento propendo ancora per la cancellazione, anche se inizio a nutrire qualche speranza. Magari non ci crederai ma il milanese sarebbe la mia lingua madre ,anche se l'ho persa, e mi piacerebbe ci fosse una wikipedia in quella lingua. --DracoRoboter 17:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

How is the procedure?

I have been struck by the way a participant to this debate (and to the vote) describes himself in his metawiki user page : "I registered to vote against a proposal of closing a wikipedia. I leanrt of this through a mailing-list". This seems to mean that

1. Anybody passing by can register and vote without even knowing anything about wikipedia, and
2. It seems that someone is calling for voters in this discussion outside wikipedia, and this kind of external promotion seems to me quite unfair.

Am I right or am I mistaken (I hope so!)? --Vermondo 12:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The Wikimedia administrator should take all of this into consideration, and try to make a fair decision. Those that advertise externally will probably only end up hurting their cause. No matter what the votes say at the end of the period, the administrator's decision stands, and he will choose a course of action based on his opinion of the situation. If he sees external vote manipulation... well... I know what I would do! -- Yekrats 12:36, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I want to point out that none from it.wiki has tried any external vote manipulation. Unlike ca.wiki (by Clamengh) or mailing-list (by who?) spams to get more keep voters. Nobody wrote any reminder on it:Wikipedia:Bar or in the topic of #wikipedia-it IRC channel, although it would have been very useful to gather interested people (it and lmo speaking) on this page. I hope that the fair behaviour of it.wiki users will be taken into better consideration, instead of keeping on calling them just racist. --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 13:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

And while we are talking

The senseless, bot-driven, creation of articles like this one contiunes, nearing 105.000. These last articles are created by a bot run by a basque user that can't speak lombard. Why this things are still happening? I think I will ask for adminship on lmo. And I hope other people from the Lombard speaking areas will join me, because I'm tired of seeing lmo.wiki devastaded by spanish bots. --Snowdog 18:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I also point out this proposal by Kemmotar on lmo.wiki Village Pump. Trying, at least, to stop new bot article creation. I'm curious to understand what does Clamengh think about it all, since he stopped writing anything but in steward elections pages (basing his votes on what candidates voted in this discussion). --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 11:11, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The proposal was actually made by Flavi but, ok, it was both Flavi's and my idea. Actually I was going to post a notice about that proposal on this page, but since you have already done it ;-) ...

--Kemmótar 13:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

And while we are talking, we can stop certain Bots from doing even more damage. Have a look at this proposal by Flavi and Kemmótar: 'ga vöör da fermá cèrti bot' this proposal.--Kemmótar 13:09, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it's a little bit too late? After more than 100.000 articles made of fried air? With this discussion in progress? Anyway, It may be the first step to solve this problem. --Remulazz 13:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Better late than never. As you said, it is (only) the first step.--Kemmótar 15:10, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I hope this means that you help us deleting 99.000 (estimation) trash articles. I wonder how we can do that --DracoRoboter 15:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

With a bot hopefully. --Snowdog 16:14, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course I will help! I have deleted a few, but it is clear that this process has to be automated. 'We' could create a Bot operating with some kind of "spam score": high score -> delete automatically; low score -> create a list of candidates to be deleted with human intervention.

I said 'we' because, unfortunately, I don't have the necessary skills to create such a Bot. Flavi, Snowdog, do you think you could help? --Kemmótar 16:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I've never had an interest in bots, but I can learn how to operate one if needed. --Snowdog 17:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Good!--Kemmótar 18:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

For those willing to get documented

As a matter of fact, 'Lombard language' (or tongue) is the standard term used by scholars to designate this language. So this is the right place for this article, as Bkonrad correctly poointed out. As someone else noted, a Google search for 'Lombard language' returns more than 1.000.000 results: I think this settles the question. I think that politicised views should be left far from this encyclopedia, as WP:NOT requires. Reality is simple: no doubt that Lombard is a dying language, so everyone is kindly asked not to shot at the red cross. Thank you. Here are some references:

• Glauco Sanga: La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 500 (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500), Lubrina publisher, Bèrghem
• Orbis Latinus
• dict.cc, Deutsch-English Übersetzaung
• Logos dictionary for Mantuan and Bressan
• the linguist list
• tourist information
• Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda offerti a Maurizio Vitale, (Studies in Lombard language and literature) Pisa : Giardini, 1983
• Fasolo, Giovanni Battista<ca. 1600-ca. 1664> - Il Carro di Madama Lucia , et una Serenata in lingua lombarda (Lombard language), che fa la gola, a carnevale; dopo un Ballo di tre Zoppi; con una Sguazzata di colasone. Una moresca... - Roma: Robletti, Giovanni Battista, 1628
• Brevini, Franco - Lo stile lombardo : la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi / Franco Brevini - Pantarei, Lugan - 1984 (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi )
• G.Hull: the linguistic unity of northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, University of Sidney West, 1982
• romaniaminor, a map of Romance languages, including lombard language It needs Flash.
• A paper by the Catalan linguist Santi Arbós, see contents at p.2 This link is dead!--Kemmótar 01:10, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
• La llengua llombarda - Article by Andrea de Vecchi (Catalan)
• Italia Settentrionale crovevia di idiomi romanzi, atti del convergno internazionale Trento 1993 (Northern Italy carrefour of Romance idioms, proceedings of international congress, Trent 1993), Niemeyer, Tübingen 1995
• Unesco red book of endangered languages
• [www.iso.ch ISO international standards]
• Jørgen G. Bosoni, «Una proposta di grafia unificata per le varietà linguistiche lombarde: regole per la trascrizione», in Bollettino della Società Storica dell’Alta Valtellina 6/2003, p. 195-298 (Società Storica Alta Valtellina: Bormio, 2003). A comprehensive description of a unified set of writing rules for all the Lombard varieties of Switzerland and Italy, with IPA transcriptions and examples.
• Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky (eds.), The Atlas of languages : the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York 2003, Facts On File. p. 40.
• Stephen A. Wurm, Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris 2001, UNESCO Publishing, p. 29.
• Glauco Sanga: La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 500 (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500), Lubrina publisher, Bèrghem
• Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda offerti a Maurizio Vitale, (Studies in Lombard language and literature) Pisa : Giardini, 1983
• Brevini, Franco - Lo stile lombardo : la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi / Franco Brevini - Pantarei, Lugan - 1984 (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi )
• G.Hull: the linguistic unity of northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, University of Sidney West, 1982
• Canzoniere Lombardo - a cura di Pierluigi Beltrami, Bruno Ferrari, Luciano Tibiletti, Giorgio D'Ilario - Varesina Grafica Editrice, 1970

Does a common Lombard language exist?

This question has arisen again and again and again, in different versions, in the course of this discussion.

Lombard is a group of related language varieties (or 'dialects', if you wish; I -- as many other linguists -- prefer to use the neutral term 'language variety').

As per today (I have no crystal sphere ;-) ), there is no Lombard variety or koiné common to Eastern and Western Lombard. Theoretically, it could be created, but it would probably remain a mere academic experiment and would never be accepted by the majority of speakers. Another way to say this could be that it is sociolinguistically not feasible, and personally I do not believe in this solution.

When we speak of those particular Finno-Ugric varieties spoken in Northern Scandinavia, Finland and Russia, we call them Sami (aka. Lappish), but do not imply that there is one common Sami language or koiné. We can also speak of Nordic languages, but we do not imply that there is a common language or koiné for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and the Faeroes. Or we can speak of Western Romance, without implying that there is some common koiné for Spanish, Catalan, French, Lombard, Friulian, etc. etc.

When I use the term 'Lombard', I intend to say something very similar to when I say 'Sami': a group of related varieties, with common traits separating them from other varieties, but also with internal differences and subgroupings.--Kemmótar 18:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

OK. I agree with you. Next step is...? --Remulazz 18:57, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The next steps for the community should be: 1. stop the Bots generating garbage, 2. create some kind of Bot to remove the most obvious garbage, 3. define some rules for what is garbage and what is not, and 4. remove even more if necessary. When these problems are solved (or even while they are being solved), 5. work on the orthography and lexicon. Later, if necessary, the LMO-WP could be split into east and west. Upper Valtellina will remain problematic. --Kemmótar 23:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

They seems to be able to cope with the different varieties of the Norman language over at nrm.wikipedia. Maybe there is something to learn from the way they do it? --Jorunn 19:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Takk for tipset, Jorunn! It would be really interesting to see how they cope with this problem at the NRM-WP. Actually, I believe that the main problem is due to the interactive way a WP works. After all, we do have newspapers and magazines containing articles both in NO-Nynorsk and NO-Bokmål, but those texts are not meant to be edited by after they have been published... Even if I have been studying Lombard varieties for many years, as a speaker of the Tessin koiné (Western Lombard) I have no problems reading an article in Eastern Lombard, but I would need a grammar book, a dictionary and a lot of time in order to do major edits. More or less (rather more than less) as if I had to edit a text in Swedish (while I normally use Nynorsk).--Kemmótar 23:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

General remarks on minor languages

I am administrator at the eml: wikipedia, and I want to give some motivations to my vote for 'keep'. First of all, I have been very critical of the management of the lombard wikipedia from the very moment I started getting interested in the wikipedia project, for a number of reasons that have been clearly stated above. I resume them as follows:

• Rather authoritarian behaviour from the current administrators, who seemed more interested in building their small kingdom than in helping growing up a working community: I will not expand on this here, everybody can visit the site and make up his/her own opinion.
• Usage of wikipedia for developing a project about a new language. Although I am not opposed in priciple to studying an effective way to create a lombard koinè, this is outside the scope of wikipedia, where existing languages and existing conventions should be used.
• Unreasonable attitude toward communication in Italian: I can understand that there is a drive toward employing, within discussion pages, the proper language of a small wikipedia of a minor language spoken in Italy; but when this is clearly not possible, preferring English over the national language is immotivated, and it excludes some really important contributors from the discussion (yes, strange as it may sound, there ARE persons in Italy that do not speak English, expecially among elderly people who are more likely to be very competent in the minor language).
• Self-defeating strategy of inflating the local wikipedia by adding very low-quality bot-generated articles.
• Unreasonable attitude of the Language Subcommittee to acritically adhere to a standard basically built up by an organisation (SIL) which has been heavily criticised for a lot of choices. And yes, let me repeat it, Lombard as a language, and not as a family, will not spring into existence because some guys in Dallas says so. Ditto for Emilian and Romagnol (eml).

The reason why I was not vocal on the subject is that times were clearly not mature for a vocal opposition. In some sense, this bot crazyness that recently took possession of the lombard and volapük wikipedias is good, because it allowed a lot of persons to realise that there was a big problem, and that some solution must be found. However, I believe that simply shutting down the offending wikipedia is the wrong reaction to the right problem; moreover, I fear that drastic solutions against these wikipedias will have an impact also on "innocent" ones, like the one where I am working (where we DO cope with multiple dialects; OK, this was my declaration about my "conflict of interest"). My remarks are:

• As agreed by a majority, the bot junk absolutely needs being eliminated in a reasonably short time (that means, within weeks). By the way, bot craziness is of course not affecting only these two wikipedias: it just happens that they exposed themselves too much. I have detailed elsewhere a proposal for effectively stopping bot-generated articles from lowering wikipedia's quality and artificially inflating its size, without renouncing to the added value of database-like encyclopedic material.
• The current management should be desysopped, and a fresh wave of administrators be voted in, who should consider their mandate as temporary, with the goal of solving the bot craziness and help starting a real discussion in the lombard community on how to organise work in that wikipedia. On the other hand, closing down the site would probably stop this process for a very long time, if not forever (this is the main motivation for voting a strange 'keep').
• Among all reasons of the 'close' party, the only one that I do not agree with (and which is not shared by all, by the way) is the idea that multi-dialectal wikipedias should not exist. The wikipedia community is continuosly propagandising that the encyclopedia is written in as many as 250 languages, which, in many respect, is a complete lie. The reality is that small communities are hardly sustainable, and having similar dialects co-habitating on a single site is an effective way to implement cooperation and enlarge the contributor base. This is what was stated by many, for instance, when the eml wikipedia was approved. The sad reality is that this is a statement of principle, which is not supported by sufficient flexibility from the Language Subcommittee and by the wikimedia software (I am talking about the ever-dreamed and always-delayed-in-the-future Multilingual MediaWiki, and the exclusion of multi-dialectal wikipedias from the Betawiki localisation system).

Maybe, the process of reforming the lmo wikipedia will start some debate on the viability of minor-language wikipedias and their goals (which cannot be generalist, but which have a big niche of regional interest; this is my opinion at least), and on which steps should be taken by the Foundation to effectively support these initiatives. In this respect, I support the creation of a coordination of multilingual or multidialectal wikipedias (whose vehicular language should logically be Esperanto). But, most probably, this should be the subject of a different discussion. --Tèstaquêdra 01:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Squarehead for president. --DracoRoboter 02:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC) That's the point, and debating calling racist and fascist our opponents do not help.

I agree completely. And for those who don't know, actually, some pro-close and pro-keep user are working on lmo.wiki to fix it. --Snowdog 09:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I strongly agree, with all the arguments of Tèstaquêdra. (Maybe to explain why the italian is not considered at all as service language in lmo is because apparently, spite the huge number of small languages espoken, the still actual sysop of lmo wikipedia is not able to speak that language, in according to his user page). --Bramfab 09:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Another general problem of small and new wikis is the disproportion between those who speak minor languages and those who are able to write them. I have some experience from the Kabyle wiki, where the number of articles is very small and increases quite slowly, because those who access easier (and who struggled for its creation) are immigrants who live in France or America and often have a limited knowledge of the language (if they are sons of Kabyles), or have never learned how to write it. Those who could better contribute are the Kabyle themselves in Kabylia (where the language is taught in the schools since 1995), but in that region internet is not so widespread and is usually very slow (I once tried to show wikipedia to some university students in Tizi Ouzou, but we only succeeded in opening the first page after a long time) and it is very difficult to contribute. Up to now nothing bad happened. It's only growing very very slowly. But I realize the risk, should a fanatic enter kab.wiki and begin to editate articles in his own version of the language (there too, some "purists" try to create a mythical language, pure and without arabic or french loans) the kab.wiki could easily become something alike the Lombard one. The risks of being small.. --Vermondo 09:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

A voice of reason! Thank you for that, Tèstaquêdra. I agree with everything you said. Especially Esperanto being used as a ponto-lingvo! ;-) Since I don't read Italian, however, I'm curious about your bot proposal. Could you please share basic information about it? Thanks... -- Yekrats 18:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Hallo Yekrats, if you are still interested, I have prepared a translation into English of the proposal, and put it in your talk page: en:User_talk:Yekrats#Tèstaquêdra_proposal. --Tèstaquêdra 22:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Since I am interested in the question of minor language Wikipedias, and my own home wp (Volapük) was mentioned en passant, I thought I might throw in a few comments and theses...

a. Bot-created articles are in principle OK. I agree that lmo.wp has a problem, but it's not the source of their stubs (bot or human, a stub is a stub is a stub...), but the lack of care. As many have said, lmo.wp stubs are transferred without translation and without accuracy checks, there is almost no activity attempting to correct them and make them come at least reasonably close to the articles they were copied from. I think in principle the stubs should not be deleted, but simply improved. Note that other Wikipedias (e.g. en.wp) also have stubs and/or articles about numbers, small communities (towns and villages), asteroids, TV sitcoms, and songs. What is wrong in lmo.wiki is that next to nothing is done besides copying the stubs -- even translation is rare. In that sense, I agree with Yekrat's and most other people's criticism of the quality at lmo.wp.

b. We shouldn't care so much about the number of stubs, but about their quality. It doesn't matter that lmo.wp has 105,000 bad stubs; what matters is that they have bad stubs. If they only had 105 articles and 95% were bad, non-informative, untranslated stubs or even empty pages, the situation of lmo.wp would IMHO be just as bad; it just would be less noticeable, since we all still make the mistake of thinking article count is a meaningful measurement of maturity for a Wikipedia. The question is: can lmo.wp improve these stubs (with human work, or with bots, it doesn't matter), or can't it? If it can't (or won't), then IMHO the stubs should be deleted; if it can (and will), then they shouldn't (though of course the decision rests finally in the hands of the lmo.wp community);

c. A central commons-like database is a great idea. I had made a similar, but vague, suggestion on the discussion for closure of the Volapük Wikipedia, so I agree 100% with Tèstaquêdra and his proposal: let's have a central database like commons with e.g. geographic data (on Italian comunes as he says, and I'd extend it to all cities everywhere, and perhaps to other similar bodies of data) which can be easily copied and used by every Wikipedia, just like the files at Commons. Why? The reasons are analogous to the rationale for the existence of Commons:

- the information (e.g. cities and their coordinates, areas, populations, etc.) is encyclopedia-worthy;

- it is necessarily the same for all Wikipedias, so if there is no central management it must be copied over and over again for every new Wikipedia

- if the information is centrally handled, accuracy increases and inconsistencies disappear (several small town and village articles even on en.wp have e.g. different data -- coordinates, population figures, area -- in the infobox and in the accompanying prose).

d. What are the goals for minor-language Wikipedias? I made extensive suggestions about the goals to be reached by minor languages in Wikipedia projects (see here). Here, I will simply say that the goal of a small-language, small-community Wikipedia cannot be to become like the major Wikipedias (en.wp, de.wp, fr.wp, etc.) because this is simply impossible. Their goal must be different. It may be -- though this is not clear to me -- that the List of articles that every Wikipedia should have is a good goal for small-language projects, but then again it may also not be. This topic needs discussion, or else people may judge small-language, small-community Wikipedia projects with unfair criteria that these projects imply cannot meet.

Thanks! --Smeira 20:39, 10 Dec 2007

A historical approach to minor languages and their prophylactic dissolution. To the glory of all-mighty State.

So-called 'Minor Languages' have gone a long way in their history by paths quite different from those led by 'Major Languages'. They have had to live without the benefit of a supporting all-mighty State. Today still many minor languages suffer from a painful lack of standardization, a process that occurred in major state-languages by 18th century, and many people have forgotten or never knew. Standardization solved the problem of variants in spoken and written languages in most state-languages in Europe, and it greatly contributed to their present day health and strength. Standadization, as many of the changes in 18th century was carried out in a top-down power-driven, certainly not democratic way. How it could at the time? It consisted basically of prescribing one word over the other, an ortography was labelled correct while another incorrect or illiterate. This was a traumatic process, no doubt, and speakers/users were never asked, but soon began to experience the benefits, in the way of higher intercommunication fluency, less misunderstandings, more explicit texts and rulings, and it was soon accepted, or rather withstood. Needless to say, the fact of belonging to a one-and-same linguistic community eased up things a lot. Speakers of a linguistic variant usually accept another variant put forward as a standard with a marvellous degree of generosity and common sense. That was at that time, when no politics were involved. Remember, one only all-mighty State, one common language, several variants that are strongly filtered, selected and chopped away without mercy. And that was a long time ago. Most people were never told of the process itself, but noticed its consequences: the writings were progressively but swiftly changed to the standard. The schools taught the standard to the children, while universities, public officers, the judiciary, etc did the rest. And the parents at home were content with that; it was culture and progress. Besides, the standard was after all not all that different from what was spoken at home. Well, that was at that time. Now times have changed. Some members of the plot have survived, while some new ones have appeared. Among the former (the survivors) is the dare need for stadardization for any language that wishes to survive in this fast changing world of ours. Standardization is the sine-qua-non condition of modern languages. Also, all-mighty State is still there, stronger than ever. Economy has become the measure of all things and by that measure modern State is trillion-fold more powerful than 300 hundred years ago. The fraction of our lifes that depends on the State (through direct money transfers, grants, public enterprises, media control and modulation of public opinion, legal and fiscal requirements an many more) is a huge one. In fact it is hard to believe that any large-scale social initiative can be put forward that goes against the State interest. And the State has recently seen in the minority languages a source of nationalism and separatism. So they see it, no questions asked. It could be inquired for the origins of these social phenomena, but far more easy is to deal with the phenomena themselves. To declare nationalism a wicked evil and aim all state power against them. To destroy them. No reflection on central State-nationalism. No consideration of possible long-term benefits of a free, articulated society, with complex-level alliances, embodying multiple senses of belonging, versus a uniform one-level flat population in direct contact with State and its long tentacles that guide and feed it. And they decided. Let simplicity rule ! He who is not with me is against me, and should be swiftly and legally excised from the social corpus. And there we find so-called 'minor languages'. Minor languages ? Minor problem. So it goes. Let's first strike them where it hurts more: on their lack of standardization. That's why modern state is benevolent and generous with microscopic local dialects -clearly unviable in a modern globalizing world- to the point that they are exalted to the category of language, (milanese, piamontese, brecianesque, and so), while a desdainful suspect is cast upon wider collective linguistic expressions, which are mockingly and arrogantly labelled 'non-existent'. The results of any effort towards standardization is tipped as a pure invention, ('never heard by my grandmother who lived here or there'), forgetting that we are all speaking words that at some time could have been deemed non-existent by their speakers. Nothing left of the old diligence and generosity, the long-practised nurturing of a language with the policies that would foster a standard and work best for their health and well-being. Now the variant rules. It is the Holly Mark of Decency and the particular citizen, however illiterate, the last court of appeal. Long live the local variant! said the State. The tiniest letter or graphical variant becomes crucial. Generosity and tolerance are discarded in the linguistic arena, while distrust and zeal are encouraged. No consideration for similarity in pronunciation, for ease of mutual understanding (the old classical criterium to define languages), no distinction of rule and usage. Even if we are talking about local ways of expression adscribed to towns separated less than 100 miles from one another, there are no shades no hues, it's all black or white, its mine or yours. And if they are at all different, they are completely separate languages indeed. They have nothing in common. What could have in common milanese and bresciano ? Nothing, of course ! (...) And if this were not enough, for those die-hards that resist, we have a last curse to throw upon them: They shall be accused of doing politics. Politics ! That's it. They are doing politics and of the worst kind: nationalistic politics ! There we have it. And so it goes, with 8-12 slowly dying languages just in Europe, a process accelerated -even histerically urged- by inhabitants of their own ancestral territories.

To make a long story short, this could make up a simplified image of the end result: A large uniform, docile mob that is easy prey to manipulation and deceit. No wonder this same modern State is absolutely helpless and overwhelmed by real challenges like climatic change, immigration, supranational (european) integration or the rising competition of thriving foreign powers.

(PS.: By the way, the old claim of intercommunication is rendered invalid here since, as a contributor said.. 'no Lombardy citizen fails to understand and speak italian'. It is a universal fact that all minor-language speakers have been well-taught, and have a full knowledge of the official (major) language. So, the old accusation of hindering intercommunication is no longer tenable).

Are the attacking italianists good Wiki-citizens?

Someone asked the same question about Lombardist, so I would revert the question. In this page, the attacking italianists haved the following behaviour:

• they were very aggressives;
  
• they attacked everyone voted "keep" (some italian sysop/steward too, almost 2);
  
• they used Wikipedia as a forum;
• absolute anti-lombard attitude (of the italian sysop/steward too);
• anti "others" attitude. A steward wrote: "the articles about American cities are irrelevant", and then cancelled, admitting his mistake.
  

So, I woud ask: are they good Wiki-citizen, or only are they "contra" the Lombard language and every little language ?
-- Aprilx 13:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You forgot one. They started to collaborate with Flavi and Kemmotar to delete the cruft and save lmo. (not only those three)

So, are they in the first place contra the Lombard language? Bon Zeenie 13:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, 'they' are individuals, each with his/her own ideas! Some of them might be against, and some in favour.--Kemmótar 16:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Brainstorming - Why do we need a Lombard Wikipedia? What are our expectations?

We have already WPs in EN and lots of other languages. Why do we need a LMO-WP? Please, write here your ideas.--Kemmótar 16:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Because it could be an extremely fun place, which could preserve popular language that might disappear (see for example un istmo da manüaal, literally an instruction-booklet isthm, here), where local people that love their traditions could collaborate with professional linguists. It does not take much, it should simply be kept clear of political and personal issues. Bon Zeenie 17:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC) ps: I'm almost ready to change my vote, but I would also like to see some people say "yes, I was wrong, they were not being fascists"

• Because I'm half milanes, I love the place where I live and I mostly lost my "mother language" (is, litteraly the language of my mother): I hope this could help me to learn el meneghin (pu se d'adess). I quote BZ about vote changing --DracoRoboter 18:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Concerning learning el meneghin: in case you don't have it already, this is the best grammar so far: Nicoli, F. 1983, Grammatica Milanese, Busto Arsizio, Bramante Editori (out of print, unfortunately, but some antique bookshop might still have it).--Kemmótar 00:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• What is your opinion about this issue: sometimes, while speaking in some variety of Lombard, it is common even for native speakers to use words borrowed from Italian (or from other languages, generally English, most often via Italian). Do you think we should try to find proper Lombard words that can be accepted by the LMO-WP community (and the wider community of speakers) ?--Kemmótar 01:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced that we can have a lot common words between all the Lombards dialects, I remind that the differences arose from a long history of differents domination among the lands at west and east of the Adda river. I would like also to add that my mother teach me that his father, when he was young, was able even to recognise from which quarter (Porta) of Milano the other youngs lived. This because the milanes was at that time, at popular usage, subtil subdivided. Try to put together into just one language I don't feel it can be useful to preserve popular any language.
• OT I notice that the picture in the page indicated as example do not contains any indication of license at all.

  gh'inn d'oltri immaginj in sui commons, ma i liceenz puderian vess un olter prublema da analizà :-) Bon Zeenie 14:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Lombard is a romanic language as is stated in the catalan Viquipèdia [24]. If it is a language we need a Wikipedia in that language, and the people who speaks that language needs a Wikipedia, and we want do that, we will make a Wikipedia in that language, if we need to do one billion of articles about numbers we shall do it. Pérez 17:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

There are thousands of languages in a death danger and we need a Wikipedia in every language in death danger. Pérez 18:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Excellent question! I hope it can be debated at a more general level: why do we need any WP other than say, the 10-15 major ones (since over 90% of the people in the world speak at least one of these languages)? My answer: together with the above "preservationist" arguments ("it's a wonderful language, it hsa a wonderful culture, they should be preserved and allowed to flourish", etc. -- all arguments with which I wholeheartedly agree), I will add the idea that a small-language project has the chance of being creative: it does not, in fact it cannot, become a universal encyclopedia like en.wp, so it has the opportunity of defining itself in a new way and becoming something different, something interesting and new. Perhaps a local documentation of everything that is important to the speakers of this language and their culture; perhaps a test ground for the interaction between this community and the world (a place to develop new vocabulary, to write in that language about topics rarely discussed in that language -- quantum mechanics in Breton, Stoic philosophy in Aromanian, American politics in Wolof); or maybe something else that nobody has yet thought of. If you allow me, maybe each small-language WP project is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get... or what they might develop into. --Smeira 20:15, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Road Map

This is my proposal (summary), please add your comments:

The next steps for the community should be:

• 1. Done stop the Bots generating garbage (we are working on the case)
• 2. Done create some kind of Bot to remove the most obvious garbage (is anybody working on this?)
• 3. (quite) Done define some rules for what is garbage and what is not
• 4. (starting Done less of 50.000 stub) remove even more garbage if necessary (very likely)

When these problems are solved (or even while they are being solved):

• 5. work on the orthography and lexicon.
• 6. have a look at als.wikipedia, nrm.wikipedia and eml.wikipedia in order to see how they cope with the issue of different varieties. --Kemmótar 01:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• Very reasonable. --Snowdog 22:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
• support DracoRoboter 20:57, 6 December 2007 (UTC) (Indeed I'm close to change my mind about lmo-closing)

What's gonna happen?

Polls are keeping going on, and it seems to me that the close valid votes are about double than the valid keep ones. I'd like to understand what's gonna happen in the case of a close victory. I've already stated I'd like to send lmo.wiki back to the incubator.wiki, because it seems the most reasonable way of solve this situation, especially since a lot of new people (me included) joined lmo.wiki community in last few days to find a way to re-start it with a new collaboration spirit. I just like to understand from stewards, the Language Committee, WMF or the one who will decide for the future of lmo.wiki if "close"="send lmo.wiki to incubator". Just because a lot of people who voted "close" are now spending a lot of efforts to solve problems "from the inside" and maybe they won't be happy to guess that their "close" vote would mean a complete knockout of the Lombard Wikipedia. Thanks! --Giac! - (Tiago is here) 16:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Lots of things are changing on lmo and (as already said) I'm close to change my vote here. Anyway I support giac's idea. --DracoRoboter 18:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a lot of things are changing, and quite surprisingly, the italian fascist who asked or voted for the closure of lmo.wiki have stopped the bots and started to write real articles, while the ones accusing us of fascism or racism , right after making good use of their democratic right to express an opinion on a subject they don't know, have just disappeared. --Snowdog 01:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The sad part is, they still have robots running crazy there, as of 3 December!!!! Who is controlling TXiKiBoT? That menace should be immediately banned and it's junk should be immediately deleted! -- Yekrats 22:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I think bots are under control now. --Remulazz 12:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

TXiKiBoT and Blamenegh are stopped now, and new admin (me, remul, snowdog, fabex ) started to delete all "rumenta" (waste). Let's (please) see recent changes. DracoRoboter 01:17, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, thank you for the update. Good luck! -- Yekrats 03:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, are there any thoughts about improving the stubs rather than deleting them? --Smeira 19:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If they could improve the stubs, that would be fine. But I think it is beyond the ability of the community to improve it all. Worse, many of the articles had questionable worth in an encyclopedia, and were clearly for the purposes of inflating numbers. (Like the empty articles, "Lists of lists" of asteroids, integers 1-9999, and that sort of thing. The lmo-community should have their own minimum standards which constitute "an article". I am clearly not fond of the gimmicks which were used in the past to artificially inflate numbers. (I didn't like it when the Volapuk did it either. ;-)) The evaluation and deletions that have been done so far in lmo are good. They, as a community, should decide if an article is improvable or not. If it is valuable, please keep it! If it's a soulless piece of robot flotsam only used for number inflation, it should be deleted... just like worthless nonsense is treated in other Wikipedias. That being said, I am glad the lmo-community is taking these mature steps to become a better Wikipedia. -- Yekrats 14:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

And please notice that we are deleting articles titled "List of ..." that, as you can easily imagine, is not lombard. Or articles like "Starless et Bible Black (àlbum)" were for unknown reasons, the and in the title has been translated with an et (and et is not lombard) --Snowdog 22:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I hope the Lombard community will want to improve what can be improved -- even what was done for "number inflation" should be conserved if it can be improved. The difference is in the care and improvement. If the Lombard community thinks they cannot -- or don't want to -- improve/translate these stubs, then I agree it's better to delete them. Why have non-Lombard or empty pages that nobody wants to take care of? I would, though, suggest that there may be many among these pages that could actually be salvaged and improved -- should the community decide to invest time in them. After all, note that the articles Yekrats mentions -- list of lists of asteroids, numbers, dates and years, etc. -- also exist on en.wp, where nobody calls them "soulless piece of robot flotsam", but rather something like "stubs in need of expansion". (Of course, they are in English, and there are people taking care of them -- which makes all the difference. If there's a will to improve...). Yekrats, I know you didn't like the Volapük expansion (to put it mildly :^)); but note that, thus far, its effects have been good: new interested Volapük editors have shown up, articles are being consistently improved and corrected, bureaucratic business is being taken care of (have a look at vo:Vükiped:Kafetar); even the List of articles that you put so much work on at eo.wp is now being taken care of at vo.wp; and, for the Wikipedia community as a whole, new ideas on how to measure quality have been put forth (List of Wikipedias by sample of articles). All in all, even if you didn't like the choice of method, I think you probably will agree the results were not bad. --Smeira 08:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow. I just did a little poking around on the English wiki. I weep to know that pages like those in en:Category:Lists of asteroids by number not only exist in English, but in several other languages as well. It doesn't change my opinion of what language it's in; it's still junk. (Ugh!) Essentially I agree with you though: articles which can be maintained by the community should be kept. It's not the origin, but the ability of the community to maintain it and deal with problems. -- Yekrats 18:16, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, I might add that I don't think it was the number of articles being advertised that has brought people to VO, but it was the proposal to close it because of the large number of strange and empty bot-articles. This prompted people to step up and save it. The same is going on in the LMO Wikipedia right now. I consider the LMO Wikipedia much better off than it was a couple of weeks ago, which is the real goal I guess. However, if someone hadn't brought this proposal, I don't think they would have stopped on their own. In fact, they kept on running their bots even after the proposal was brought, and I really think we could have been seeing the galactic database in East and West Lombard dialects in about a year! I think these Wikipedias (lmo & vo) are going through similar improvements due to the intense scrutiny of a Proposal to Close. Thus, it is not the number of articles which has brought outside help and big improvement, but the desire to save the Wikipedias in danger of being deleted. -- Yekrats 13:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll mention once more that it's weird to see that the people who took care of LMO are voting "Close", with the exception of two LMO admins. It's sad to see so many people not understanding the sorry state of LMO.wiki two weeks ago. :-( 195.176.178.209 16:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Yekrats that external (constructive) criticism can be good for a project, especially under threat of closure! I am happy to see the lmo contributors doing what they think is best for the project -- especially defining rules for what counts as garbage or not, and selecting interesting goals. It's a pity, though, that a number of people take advantage of such a proposal to make non-constructive criticism, express repressed feelings, etc. A number of the accusations here and on the vo-closure proposal would be textbook examples of incivility, to put it mildly. But one good thing here is, as the above poster mentions, that people are trying to help lmo.wp improve -- even those who vote Close. Despite some harsh words, I see here -- at least in the post of some people -- a real desire to improve, not simply to close or destroy. This certainly brightens my day! --Smeira 09:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this a language of education?

In general, I'm opposed to Wikipedias in small languages for the mere sake of having a Wikipedia in a small language. Wikipedia is not Asterix is my motto when it comes to this issue. I am only in favor of Wikipedias in languages that are used somewhere as a language of instruction. So my question to the people who know is this: are there schools and/or universities where Lombard is used as the medium of education? Are there textbooks on mathematics, history, etc. written in Lombard? Angr 16:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Ahm, a language can become a language of education... Not providing education in the mother tongue is a common way of language oppression. Saying no Wikipedia for non medium of education languages could be seen as enforcement of such language oppression. Wikipedia can be an educational medium. Wikipedia developed from an English only project to its multilingual state today, because the Foundation wants to provide education for everybody in his mother tongue. Not being a medium of education is peremptorily no argument against a Wikipedia edition. --::Slomox:: >< 18:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the appropriate place to start education in a small language, though. If a language later becomes a medium of instruction, it can get a Wikipedia then. Angr 09:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

what is that? An axiom, an opinion or what? DracoRoboter 19:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

En català tenim un problema semblant molts de mallorquins no admeten que el Català i el Mallorquí siguin la mateixa llengua. Els valencians han aconseguit que la seua llengua tengui la denominació oficial de Valencià. La veritat es que el Català està bastant normalitzat i hi ha una mateixa ortografia pel Català que es parla al continent, o pel que es parla a les illes, i el Valencià només té unes petites variants respecte a la resta de parles de les altres regions. Una vegada discutien per la ràdio i un “blaver” (ultravalencianista) va dir que ells deien “homens” com a plural de “home”, la veritat és que els eivissencs també diuen “homens”. Es com el cas del Castellà (Castellano), l'idioma que moltes persones a l'estranger anomenen “Español”, encara que l'idioma espanyol es qualsevol idioma que es parli al regne d'Espanya, és normal que un andalús digui que no vol admetre les normes ortogràfiques de la “Real Academia” basant-se en el seu “seseo”, o tal volta en el “ceceo”? Ara hi ha un partit que es vol fer propaganda de cara a les eleccions general a les Corts Espanyoles distribuint unes normes ortogràfiques de la llengua “Baléà”, o una cosa així, jo no havia sentit a dir mai un disbarat tan gran!

A vegades, sembla que l'Estat Espanyol, la República Francesa, o l'Estat Italià no fan res per conservar el català, i no veuen que conservar un idioma significa conservar un bé cultural tan important com l' aqüeducte de Segòvia, o el teatre romà de Mèrida, o l' arc de Barà? Pérez 18:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

First of all Wikipedia (AFAIK) doesn't care about political issues. Second one Wikipedia is not a primary source for contents. Third Wikipedia is not a primary source for languages. Last: we are talking about languages of Lombardy and south switzerland not about catalan. DracoRoboter 01:39, 10 December 2007 (UTC) (yes I understand almost all)

IHT: In Italy, a winter of discontent

From my point of view, italians asking to close the LMO Wiki and that now are destroying it, are as described in the famous article of IHT (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/12/news/italy.php#end_main).
The article sais: "the country (=Italy) risks a diminished international role". And what do italians do? They ask to close and destroy the Wiki of richest italian region, the Lombard Wiki.
The article says: "In 1987, Italy celebrated economic parity with Britain. Now Spain, which had joined the European Union only the year before, may soon overtake Italy.". But Spanish dont ask to close and destroy their regional Wikipedias.
Grillino 14:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

lmo.wiki is not the wiki of Lombardy (as it.wiki is not Italy's wiki): it's the wikipedia in lombard language. I don't expect all the people called here from mailing lists and forums to understand this basic point. --Brownout^(msg) 14:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

You're right, Grillino. That was my real reason. I was worried about the diminishing international importance of Italy. And, of course, about the increasing cost of life in Italy. And don't forget the persistence of high-pressure areas over northern Italy, that took one of the worst drought period in the last century. I needed to do something.

But, I wonder, what can you expect from a fascist? --Remulazz 09:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Brownout, I don't expect all the people writing here to understand the difference between Lombardy and lombard language. But since somebody interpreted criticism as "turning this page into a forum", I do expect people not to waste their keystrokes with forum-ish hypotheses (from my point of view - ROTFL). 195.176.178.209 14:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

"ROTFL" ? Personal attacks, isn't it?

I think, Remulazz, the right question shoul be: "But, I wonder, what can you expect from an italian?". Only italians can start, in the 2007, to destroy a Wiki. But, as IHT wrote, "(italy) it is the place in hyper-regulated Europe where people still debate what the red in a stoplight might mean". Grillino 15:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Personal attacks, anyone? 195.176.178.209 15:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Hilario, how are you?

More suggested readings

http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/148.htm - Primary source
en:Italian dialects

the above is a secondary source. And is a bad source, because those are not "Italian dialects", but "Romance dialects spoken in italy".

so i suggest reading all the books in the bibliography :-)

http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html - Primary source - Please do not remove.

Why are the italians destroying the LMO Wiki?

The italians are destroying the LMO Wiki.
First they claimed because the Wiki LMO was contributed with "bots".
Now they are destroying the Wiki LMO with "bots" !
Which is the difference ? Aprilx 15:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If you take a look at #Road Map, I think they are doing anything but destroying it. They are saving a Wikipedia which was once only worthy of deletion. I see a marked improvement in the amount of junk versus the number of real articles, and I see constant work on it. Artificially inflating the numbers was "destroying" it. Now they are seriously showing LMO is at least trying to be a serious encyclopedia project, but -- as with all Wikipedias -- there is much room for improvement. -- Yekrats 16:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry for your role of "advocate", Yekrats.
Italians are using the bots to destroy the LMO wikipedia. They don't check anything.
They only are destroying all. Aprilx 09:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Aprilx, sorry not to have spotted your comment earlier. What has been deleted was only bot contributed only automatically generated pages, the major part of which was either in English or in Catalan. I can assure you, we mean absolutely no harm to the project. It's just sad to found that there were >100k articles automatically created. To give you some examples, there were articles for numbers like 51983 (no idea if this was indeed one, but they were very similar) and we checked many of them, without finding anything good. You will surely agree that there's no need for an article which tells you that 51983 is a prime number (is it? I'm no good at math :( ). If you have more specific criticism which would improve our way of dealing with bot-created articles, I (and I'm sure the other admins as well)'ll be delighted to act on it. Happy editing! Snowolf 20:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• Aprilx was right: You check nothing. I'd to rewrite an article of mine (normal and normally formatted) because you've deleted confusing it with the ones created with bot. Look better, please.

Link_FA inflation

The lombard Wikipedia came to my notice by giving articles the excellent status which a mere stubs or just lists of one-paragraph chapters. Link_FA bot makes star-links in othere wikipediæ :-(

I suggest, that all excellent markings from the lombard wikipedia shall be removed. No voter 134.96.220.133 08:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC) (otherwise, I"d vote close on lombard for rude behaviour).

that was done because, in December 2007, it was indeed enough on lmo to have one paragraph written in a decent lanaguage, to be of outstanding quality. i agree that this should be changed now. Balabiot 07:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)