Even if the conversion was possible, there is no possibility we can
determine in software one article written in which script and show it
with both scripts in public URLs to make search engines find them,
because South Azerbaijanians are not gonna search in Latin, also there
is no possibility one user can edit an article in Latin script and other
user edit the same article in Arabic script.
BTW, there are a lot different between these two dialects,
example:
/Page/: az: /Səhifə /(sahifeh), azb: /صفحه /(safhe)
Also, South Azerbaijani derives more words from Persian.
Indeed there should be a South Azerbaijani Wikipedia.
On 5/2/2015 8:52 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
Hi,
The thing I feared has happened: A conflict erupted in the Azeri
Wikipedia over the question of whether articles in Arabic script
should be there, or only in Latin. A consensus was not reached, but an
administrator decided to delete thousands of pages in the Arabic
script nevertheless.
This is a very severe action, and I suspect that that administrator's
permissions should be suspended, but that's a matter for Meta stewards.
I raise this question here, because a proper long-term solution for
the problem is needed.
As a reminder, the Azeri language is written in two scripts: Latin in
the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Arabic in the Azerbaijan region in
Northern Iran. As far as I know, both are actively used, and the users
of each script cannot read the other one.
Automatic conversion between the two scripts, as it is done for Kazakh
and Serbian, is impossible, because the Latin orthography doesn't
include capital letters and vowels.
Until recently, the two scripts somehow lived together in the same
wiki, despite the major technical problems with it, among them:
* The users of the different alphabets cannot really have common
conversations ("Village Pump").
* Only one article can be linked using Wikidata (to resolve this,
major changes are needed in MediaWiki core and in Wikidata)
* Be default the Latin script is used for the UI, which is not useful
for anonymous readers who want to use the Arabic script.
* The two scripts have different directionality, and this requires
adding markup to show the pages correctly.
But as I wrote above, now this long period of peace has ended, and
unfortunately there is a major conflict.
In the past we already discussed the possibility of creating a
separate Wikipedia in the Arabic script:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_South_Azerbaijani
IIRC, we decided not to support it, but I'd like to discuss this
again. My impression is that there are good-faith contributors who
want to write in the Arabic script, and now they are essentially
expelled, and this is wrong.
Other opinions are welcome.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
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