Requests for comment/Rename no.wikipedia to nb.wikipedia

The following request for comments is closed. closing as community opinion has been expressed. Renaming wikis are said to not be possible at this time. The matter should be pursued with the LangCom who make and implement policy on behalf of the communities


This is a request for comment on renaming the project site for Wikipedia in Norwegian Bokmål. The site norwegian bokmål (Norwegian) (this name is used in Special:Sitematrix) is considered to currently be named incorrectly, and it is suggested renaming the project to nbwiki, as nb is the ISO 639-1 code for Norwegian Bokmål. Likewise the subdomain should be nb as this is the correct code, and the content language should be set to nb.[1] The Interface code can remain as it currently is, as it is already set to nb.

Note that changing the site identifier nbwiki must most likely wait until phab:T83609 is resolved, although the prefix can be changed before that task is closed.

There is a new attempt to vote over a rename of nowiki, starting at 2nd October 2017.

Background edit

The present project nowiki is named according to a situation that existed many years ago, when nowiki included both official written forms of Norwegian, which are Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål and Norwegian Nynorsk. The language code no can be interpreted as a common code for w:Norwegian language, or what is called the inclusive code or macrolanguage. When nnwiki split off to become a project written solely in Norwegian Nynorsk, nowiki continued to use the inclusive code instead of switching to the individual code nb, which is the correct code for Norwegian Bokmål.

There were two main arguments for this. Partly a "peace offer" from nnwiki that nowiki could continue to use no as language code, and partly (and more importantly) that Norwegian language by some is considered to also consist of the unofficial, conservative forms of Nynorsk and Bokmål, which are, respectively, w:Høgnorsk and w:Riksmål. The differences to the two official language forms may be confusing to some, but while Høgnorsk was quite seldom in use at that time Riksmål was more common.

One of the main driving forces behind use of Riksmål was, and partly is, the newspaper w:Aftenposten. This newspaper used Riksmål as its language, but then in 2006 it created its own version of Riksmål and called the new language version "Moderat Bokmål". This started a slide among users of Riksmål from the previously conservative version to a more moderate version. At the other side ordinary Bokmål started a slide towards this Moderate Bokmål. In the latest version of ordinary Bokmål from 2012 the differences between Bokmål and Riksmål has become almost insignificant.

For all practical purposes there are no difference between Bokmål and Riksmål, and even for Norwegians the difference is next to impossible to spot. Most of the time when someone complains about changes to an article on nowiki that is said to be Riksmål it is simply an article written by some mixture of old Bokmål and local common dialects. This is hefty reputed by people from the Riksmål movement.

Some say harshly that Riksmål won and Bokmål has been moved towards Riksmål, but it is still called Bokmål. Some say there are still eight important differences, some say about 40, whatever is correct the differences has become infinitesimal for languages in common use. Still note that there are a lot of articles on the net that describe the status as it existed in late 1990.

It is only as a content language Riksmål is somewhat used, but the pages with Riksmål is not marked in any way. It will probably not be possible to identify by automatic means which pages is truly Riksmål, most of the terms that can be used as identificators will be just noise, and there will be no clear winner even for articles which are said to be written in a specific language form. It is simply not possible to identify any clear distinction between them after a few revisions.

The interface language at nowiki is more or less pure Bokmål, and the language code in use are nb that is Bokmål. There are no interface language for Riksmål. The project use nb as its default language.

In short, the reason why the no language code is used on nowiki is simply a continuation from the split between nowiki and nnwiki. There are no real reason why the code is no and not the more proper nb.

Future of the subdomain no edit

There is no clear solution on where the no.wikipedia subdomain should point, but one possibe solution is to eventually split the traffic evenly between nnwiki and nbwiki. If an article exist on both wikis the choice among them can be randomized, but if the trend is skewed the losing wiki should be weighted up.

It can be argued that the choice between them should reflect the number of users of the various language forms, but that will open up for a discussion on how many are in fact using the different language forms. Both language forms are official, and that makes it seem natural to do an equal division between them.

Another solution is to show the corresponding two pages from each Wikipedia (when they exist) side by side, allowing the reader to chose one version.

Arguments in favor edit

Partly from Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Norsk (bokmål)#Arguments in favour
  1. The ISO 639-2 code no represents all Norwegian languages, not only Norwegian Bokmål, which gives a wrong impression. That is the code no is hard coded as norsk, which is wrong as it should be norsk (Norwegian).
  2. The (most) correct code for the content language currently used on nowiki is nb, and it is used in the tag soup during page view and editing.
  3. The language code no is partly hard coded in the content as Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål and not Norwegian.
  4. Some of the specialized code to work around problems due to no being erroneously used to represent norsk bokmål (Norwegain) (name according to Special:SiteMatrix) can be removed.
  5. A lot of open bugs on Phabricator can be closed that has the no/nb mixup as it root cause.
  6. Correcting the situation will probably be appreciated by the community on nnwiki (the Nynorsk community).
  7. Change will not be visible in practice, as most major search engines have mechanisms in place to handle site moves. That is by using respond codes for permanent or temporary move.

  1. Moral Support Support, looks well. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:37, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Additionally, shouldn't this page be discussed in Langcom Mailing list? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:23, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The list seems to be correct. Note that first point is corrected and {{#language:no}} now returns "norsk" ("Norwegian"). — Jeblad 12:10, 25 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jeblad: One modification: the main task that about renaming database name is no longer phab:T21986 (a tracking bug that replaced by #Wiki-Setup (Rename)), but now phab:T83609. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:57, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Support, renaming should be heavily considered. --Bjarkan (talk) 18:00, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Support, as a Bokmål user and no admin myself, I consider nb to be clearly the (most) correct language code (and hence domain prefix) for the project. Provided that a site-wide 301 redirect is implemented, I also feel that the negative consequences of a potential move have been somewhat overstated. - Soulkeeper (talk) 20:38, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Support, I'm in favor of a move. And I'm a bit ashamed how I have argued against it earlier. — Jeblad 00:07, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Support We must make the entire T21986 works as successful, and for database we can wait for several years, but non-db issues must have their ways to be resolved before 2030, nsaa, there should have no reason to oppose renaming wiki works which is already 10th anniversary, don't make it fail, please?! -223.104.227.71 05:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Support If this change is the only way in solving the current problem where Wikipedia in Norwegian Bokmål is presented as Norsk, I support the change. Ulflarsen (talk) 09:11, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Support It seems to be the only way to solve this problem. BLÆGG 20:43, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Support per nom. 85.180.248.141 21:32, 27 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Support, I have had this opinion since the nn/nb split a long time ago. --KRISTAGAα-ω 09:37, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support Support, after reding the wiki pages, I guess this could work. Artix Kreiger (talk) 12:29, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support Support Most of oppose users are not Norwegian, they look like Dutch, and still claim that "there's only one Norwegian exiting" which is extremely wrong. --61.170.245.198 15:40, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support Support Although I'm not a Norwegian, I still agree the change, because Norwegian Bokmål is not the same as Norsk. Sæn 13:48, 14 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support Support Most of opposers are not Norwegian, they're Dutch users, who still misclaim that "only one Norwegian" shame claim. --60.26.9.175 02:55, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support Support Opposers are Dutch users, while the actual Norwegian users are supporting it. --117.136.54.137 22:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support Support The community of nowiki has asked for several years now to be moved to nb.wikipedia. They have already waited long enough.--Snaevar (talk) 22:18, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support Support Without changing URL, nothing can be better fixed. --117.14.250.62 07:27, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support SupportIPs are a way to game the system, but they still show support, as the language code no does not work. You s**t, Nederlandians! Znotch190711 (talk) 06:18, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Strong Support Support ISO639-1 code for Bokmål is nb so a rename from no (generic Norwegian?) to this for at least the articles written in Bokmål is logical. If there are mixed articles they can be in both or as someone suggested make a random (respectively statistical based on percentage of language variety usage) choice. Klaas `Z4␟` V08:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support Support per nom. J947 03:35, 24 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Moral Support Support per the nominator. 220.84.210.131 18:49, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Support Support. There's more than meets the eye. SMB99thx Talk / email! 02:32, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Support Support per others. AnotherEditor144 t - c 10:57, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Support Support. "no" is a no-no if we have multiple versions of Norsk. ~~~~
    User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)
    21:14, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Support Support I was actually wondering this too for a while now, but was never bothered to ask. SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 08:49, 29 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  25. Support Support: Don't see a reason to oppose the change. —— Eric LiuTalk 15:11, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Support Support. Given that there is a proper code for this, we should adopt the standardized prefix. Mhawk10 (talk) 22:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  27. Support Support nothing to say that hasn't already been said. HouseBlaster (talk) 23:01, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  28. Support Support This is technically proper. I wonder why this has not been enacted after more than five years! MarioJump83 (talk) 02:41, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against edit

Partly from Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Norsk (bokmål)#Arguments against
  1. The nb does not include the unofficial written form Riksmål, but those has become increasingly similar the last thirty years or so.
  2. Correcting the situation will be unpopular in the community on norsk bokmål (Norwegian) (name according to Special:SiteMatrix) (the Bokmål/Riksmål community).
  3. Change may,( and inevitably will – it seems), make repercussions on all networks, search-engines etc. that now are connecting to the present address. Link rot may create much work for both Wikipedians and "innocent bystanders". That was one of the arguments against change last time the question was discussed in noWP's Tinget.

  1. There are no support for a move at the nowiki-community per https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tinget#Flytting_av_nowiki.3F Read the full list of arguments against a move at Talk:Requests_for_comment/Rename_no.wikipedia_to_nb.wikipedia#No_relocation_from_nowiki_to_nbwiki. Some of these are a lot stronger now. nsaa (talk) 14:09, 17 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Discussion at nowiki ended and archived here https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tinget/Arkiv/2016-41#Flytting_av_nowiki.3F . nsaa (talk) 23:08, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment Comment @Nsaa: Unfortunately, your "oppose" seems failed for me, the priority of meta RFC is bigger than any single wiki RFC imho. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:33, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Go through the list an comment where it's wrong. The no-wiki can't be moved by anyone. It's the property of the nowiki Community that represent the no language code. End of case. Close it. nsaa (talk) 22:56, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    So you are also opposing rename of als|arc|bat-smg|bh|cbk-zam|eml|fiu-vro|nrm|roa-rup|sh|simple|zh-classical|zh-min-nan|zh-yue to gsw|syc|sgs|bho|cbk|egl|vro|nrf|rup|hbs|en-simple|lzh|nan|yue, as they are the properties of the als|arc|bat-smg|bh|cbk-zam|eml|fiu-vro|nrm|roa-rup|sh|simple|zh-classical|zh-min-nan|zh-yuewiki Community that represent the als|arc|bat-smg|bh|cbk-zam|eml|fiu-vro|nrm|roa-rup|sh|simple|zh-classical|zh-min-nan|zh-yue language code, aren't you? --223.104.227.71 05:21, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    And your point is? This is just noise. no.wikipedia.org has been etablished, has one of the biggest communities under the Wikimedia umbrella. Destroying this because a small group of activist want something else is just ridiculous. No is the correct code for this wiki. The claim that's wrong is wrong. nsaa (talk) 20:15, 16 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nsaa: Not surprise, your "oppose" results phab:T173602, which no is now shown as just norsk rather than norsk bokmål. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:20, 20 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Strong oppose - most people have voiced their opinion on the discussion page and oppose this request. The support consists of a few actual editors on no.wikipedia.org. of which several do not support but find the developers name change intolerable and wants the Wikipedia to have the correct name. The developers have changed the name of the Wikipedia from «Norsk bokmål» to «Norsk» and this is not an acceptable situation and not the correct name. The developers should not interfere with content and should not make decisions of which name to show. The ramifications of a move is poorly explored. --ツ regards. Dyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 11:52, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The devs has corrected the names of the language codes, but nowiki use the wrong code. The fix is pretty simple, and is to correct the language code. To make it consistent prefix and dbname must be changed too. — Jeblad 15:36, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose. Merge nn.wiki into no.wiki instead, per the obvious extension of the en.wiki engvar policy (which prevents creation of en-us.wiki, en-gb.wiki, en-ca.wiki, en-au.wiki, en-nz.wiki, and other such forks). KATMAKROFAN (talk) 01:23, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Pet your clause, we should merge English and German Wikipexias to one "Germanic Wikipedia" which also includes "Proto Germanic". We should merge Cantonese, Wuu, maybe Mindong, Minnan and Zhuang back to (Mandarin) Chinese Wikipedia. We should merge MediaWiki.org, Outreachwiki, a list of Wikimania wikis and Wikidata to our Meta. We should merge United States, Canada and Mexico, maybe as well as a lot of Carribbean Island countries to one "Federal Republic of North America". Aren't you? --111.160.133.118 01:55, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    If it is like this, then all of Wikipedia should be merged into one language wiki (where Miraheze actually has a wiki for it). Znotch190711 (talk) 19:31, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    This is not only a slippery slope argument but also a complete misunderstanding of how languages work. ~~~~
    User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)
    21:08, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    111.160, that is simply different. en: and de: are separate languages, and so are the other cases. Making such a comparison is unwarranted, as nn: and no: are variations of the same language, Norwegian. AnotherEditor144 t - c 11:52, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Strong oppose Technically unpractical and actually unnecessary. Name in sidebar is now "Norsk bokmål" and that is sufficent, no reason to migrate to nb.wikipedia. --Erik den yngre (talk) 14:43, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Citation needed for "Name in sidebar is now "Norsk bokmål"". Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:41, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose Oppose as it is unnecessary. IMO merging nn and no into one wiki would be much better to do. SummerKrut (talk) 18:46, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New voting at nowiki edit

There has been a new, and quite confusing vote at nowiki. It can be found at Ny avstemming om nb.wikipedia.org (New voting about nb.wikipedia.org) and the outcome at Avstemning (nb/no) (Voting (nb/no)) with an actual outcome of 23 for the change and 9 against. Three users have publicly abstained from casting a vote.

I believe the change is no longer blocked by the earlier voting from 2009.

I voted support on it, but @TommyG: striked my vote (why?!) --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:10, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, the @TommyG:'s action was too unfairly, it's really inappropriate to strike a supporter's comment in order to oppose something. --59.63.248.137 23:16, 26 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, i suggest you read the conditions for the vote: "Alle brukernavn aktive på dette prosjektet før forslaget til avstemning ble reist (dvs. 18. sep. 2017 kl. 18:47) har stemmerett". You were ineligible. TommyG (talk) 05:25, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226 That means: "All users active on this project before the motion for a vote was raised (i.e. Sep 18, 2017 at 6:47 pm) has the right to vote." AnotherEditor144 t - c 11:57, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Technically not practical edit

When User:Aaharoni-WMF made this edit on Norwegian WP the 2017-discussion died. The reason it died was because for a long time a lot of statements about a move had been made and mostly they were wrong.
-- I quote: "Despite what some of you may have understood from Phabricator tickets, there is no current plan to rename the URL from no.wikipedia.org to nb.wikipedia.org. There's no such plan for the simple reason that at the moment it's technically impossible. " and "Not counting some very early things back 2001, in the whole history of Wikipedia, only one URL was renamed: be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org. While this was generally desirable, it caused severe technical problems, which are still unresolved because of issues with how Wikidata and MediaWiki core handle language codes. "
-- I can see nothing here that makes this anymore technically possible than it was on October 10th 2017.
-- Further "That said, the issue of the appearance of the language name in the interlanguage links list as "Norsk" or "Norsk (bokmål)" remains unresolved, and it can be resolved." This issue was not discussed further, but the whole issue died at the time when it turned out that the whole basis for the discussion was faulty.
-- The matter of replacing "Norsk" with "Norsk (bokmål)" should be discussed in the Norwegian Wikipedias before anything is done. It is for them to decide.
-- The same thing goes for a move from no to nb. It should be a vote on Norwegian before anything is considered done. The decision belongs with the community and the discussion should be in the community and not here. But to raise such a discussion the technically impossible issue must be resolved by someone who actually knows how to solve it. --ツ regards. Dyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 19:41, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Dyveldi:
Who told you this two words? It's technically possible, otherwise what happened on foundation wiki? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:38, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Several projects has been renamed, but not so many lately. The Swedish Wikipedia was renamed from sewiki to svwiki, and that should be pretty well-known in Norway. What made it pretty difficult were lack of automated scripts. — Jeblad 00:08, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. This section is Invalid, renaming is possible, though not eastly. This really shouldn't call as impossible. --125.36.185.249 03:15, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Changed the title from “The technically not possible-issue” to “Technically not practical”, as the original title is simply false. [Changed to StevenJ81s phrasing.] — Jeblad 17:16, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from LangCom Clerk before I take it back to the mailing list edit

  1. Will someone please clarify for me: What does the community of the wiki currently coded as no.wikipedia.org want? Please provide links. (I'm pretty sure all of that is available up above, but I'm having a little trouble sorting it out.)
  2. Is there currently a notice/link somewhere on the main page of that wiki notifying people that nnwiki also exists? (There should be.)
  3. The issue of rot of incoming links is a very serious one at this point. One reason possibly not to move the wiki at this point is to prevent such a problem. I personally believe for that reason that even if nowiki is moved to nb.wikipedia, it's going to be very hard to turn no.wikipedia into a totally neutral subdomain.
    • In fact, if we move the wiki, I'm having a hard time envisioning any solution for nowiki other than something closely resembling the following—if this is even feasible:
    (i) Most addresses within no.wikipedia automatically redirect to nb.wikipedia.org/(same page name).
    (ii) Main page gets a single disambiguation page, with links, announcing that there are two separate wikis.
    Anything else creates such a mess for inbound links that I'm just not sure it's worth it.
  4. Under the circumstances, if such an approach is not possible, is it then better to leave things alone, or to move things and create all those messy, rotted incoming links? StevenJ81 (talk) 14:05, 14 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There is at present no agreement on no.wikipedia to move. When it the "technically not possible-issue" was raised the discussion slowly died. Too much of what was said in the previous discussion turned out to be wrong.
I'm not sure that we ought to move this if there is no consensus at no.wikipedia. Mind you, I think if the "technically not possible issue" is resolved in a satisfactory fashion,[1] we should probably revisit the discussion at nowiki. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:05, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- "Everybody" on the project knows that nn.wikipedia exists.
People have a tendency to act as if "'everybody' on the project" are the ones who have to know what exists and what doesn't. In fact, each of these wikis should have a notice pointing to the other, precisely because people who are not regularly on these projects deserve to know what is available. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:05, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- To reach an agreement the "technically not possible-issue" needs to be addressed and properly explained to the community. The explanation needs to come from someone who actually knows what is technically possible and the consequenses.
- Then the community can vote. The vote would have to take place on no.wikipedia and not here. Most people probably does not know that this thread exist and most of the few who do probably thinks it died a year ago. --ツ regards. Dyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 05:29, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
On the preceding two, see my first comment and the footnote. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:05, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Dyveldi: You are really extremely wrong in any clauses and any cases, see what Liuxinyu970226 answered you in the previous section. --117.15.55.67 06:24, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
At the humble least, Dyveldi, please just stop saying that that is "technically not possible". The recently renaming of foundationwiki, from https://wikimediafoundation.org to https://foundation.wikimedia.org, already hit faces (sorry for machine translating of a Chinese word 打脸) of people who said so. --117.15.55.67 06:30, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Please read what I quoted. The "technically not possible-issue" is not mine and please adress the user who made the claim.--ツ regards. Dyveldi ☯ prat ✉ post 20:38, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My take on these questions
  1. Last voting on nowiki was pretty clear: w:no:Wikipedia:Tinget/Arkiv/2017-43#Avstemning om språkkode og domene-prefiks, that is approx 2/3 for a change. There were also a previous one in 2009: w:no:Wikipedia:Avstemninger/Prefiks, that one went 2/3 against a change. The people at nnwiki should also be heard on this issue.
  2. There is a link in the sidebar at the Norwegian Bokmål main page and a note in the "Om Wikipedia" box. The same at the Norwegian Nynorsk main page. Outside the communities at nowiki and nnwiki there are quite little knowledge about the Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia.
  3. It seems like the people at nnwiki more or less accept that the "no" prefix must redirect to "nb", but their stance on this matter isn't quite clear. The main page should be used as a neutral disambiguation page.
  4. My personal stance is that the matter should be resolved.
I believe people at nowiki and nnwiki are quite aware that this is more about what is practical than what is possible, and that any renaming must wait until the scripts are finished. — Jeblad 00:46, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  1. There are no consensus on closing down the no.wikipedia.org project and open it up under nb.wikipedia.org. The «vote» Jeblad refers to here w:no:Wikipedia:Tinget/Arkiv/2017-43#Avstemning om språkkode og domene-prefiks was stopped (only some 30+ people was involved) and was not about renaming, but more about the underlying question on what the left side name should be after a very unfortunate change of this from Norsk (bokmål) to Norsk. The no.wikipedia.org should remain and never be moved to nb.wikipedia.org. The last big case about this was overwelmingly in favor of not move to nb (over 150 people vote, where it was overwhelmingly support to remain): w:no:Wikipedia:Avstemninger/Prefiks. We cover over 90 % of what has been published in Norwegian and are defined de facto outside of the bokmål subset (per w:no:Wikipedia:Språkform). We cover riksmål also that is part of no language, but do not have a specific code like nb or nn. If someone wants to start a new project under nb.wikipedia.org they should be allowed to do that, but it is a bit meaningless if you ask me. But the no.wikipedia.org project should not be closed down. There are no consensus on that. Just most people are very tired of this move against our project from people that want to move it (and indirectly restrict the language to only cover bokmål).
  2. Why?
  3. Link rot alone should be a clear no for any change and close down of no.wikipedia.org project. People have added papers (in written and online) referencing to no.wikipedia.org for two decenniums now. Any move will that do not involve a permanent 301 redirect will destroy this. Even 301 redirect will be problematic for printet books and articles using n.wikipedia.org.
  4. Same comments as above.
  5. There are many other issues with a move like this. See Talk:Requests_for_comment/Rename_no.wikipedia_to_nb.wikipedia#No_relocation_from_nowiki_to_nbwiki. Read all the 20 issues. nsaa (talk) 21:51, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nsaa: First, non of consensus are big-rock-defined forever, consensus can be changed when hearts of community members changed, that's not your call, nor my call, and nor Jeblad's call, the zhwiki user was not agree introducing zh-my variant 5~6 years ago, but what happened after 4~5 years? They finally approved and actually impleted it in the last year, specifically July 2018, before one month of that, I am the known "last one oppose user", and they told me that my oppose is shame.
Second, by just one "Why?", I'm confused. Not only I don't know what "why" are you refering, but also have you ever really read all potential related tasks?
Third, "Link rot alone should be a clear no for any change and close down" so Cantonese users should still use zh-yue: instead of more easy-to-understand and more smartphone-like yue:? "People have added papers (in written and online)" If you still think these papers are problems, please consider buying correction tape (Q1863081) for you and your friends, that's one of the damnly easiest way to "fix them" on papers, or why not just re-print them? "do not involve a permanent 301 redirect will destroy this" but if you don't change URLs, then how to fix codes on Wikidata? Just "revert some old gerrit patches"? That's not fix, that's another war zone creator.
Fourth, if you're asking how to still provide "bokmål" on the left list of languages, that's CLDR thing, not issues of any WMF or any affiliates, "a very unfortunate change of this from Norsk (bokmål) to Norsk" by some surveys in my Wikidata friends on Wechat, that's however a fair change for Wikidata, because bokmål≠the entire Norwegian language, and there's not only one Norwegian.
Fifth, "Read all the 20 issues." answered by me. For fixing the language names, please consider adopting phab:T209089 instead. In any cases of world, this is not only Norwegian issues, but also for Alemannic, for Aromanian, for Norman, for Samogitian, for Syriac, for Võro, for Emilian, for Simple English, for Chavacano, for Serbo-Croatian, for Southern Min, for Literary Chinese, for many Wikisource users, and very specially for Cantonese (phab:T10217, phab:T30441, and phab:T202602).
The last sentence of my comment is, this page, as well as combination of phab:T112426+phab:T112647+phab:T174160+phab:T202602, are parts of my Community Wishlist Survey 2020 proposal candidate, which I will include them in my draft. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 06:26, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
UPD Jan 7: "But the no.wikipedia.org project should not be closed down." have the be-tarask.wikipedia closed during renaming? Renaming the URL, by itself, does only have to change some external APCu-related database tables. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 15:39, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. And to avoid exacerbating the argument, let's stipulate that it's probably technically possible, but also not very simple to do. The argument is more about "technically not practical", not "technically not possible".

See also edit