Recently I was approached by several ladies of the
Luxembourgian Wikipedia in my capacity as a member of the
Wikimedia Foundation's
language committee. Their spokesperson,
Benotzer:FabienneWeitz informed me about one of the peculiarities of the
Luxembourgish language. There is a distinct difference in being addressed by a man or a woman.
In a mail she writes: "So far our Wikipedia has been dominated by men. We have formed a group of lady Wikipedians and started to write using the gentle form. This has led to bitter disputes and several of us have been blocked. What to do?"
 |
| Fabienne (m) and her Wikipedia friends |
After verifying the linguistic aspects we asked
Ziko van Dijk to help us reach a compromise in this battle of the sexes. Ziko researched the Germanic Wikipedias in his 2008 book and considered the
lb.wikipedia the best of the small Germanic Wikipedias. Ziko is a respected member of both the German and Dutch chapter. Sadly we were not able to find a compromise.
Given the precedent of the
Belarus Wikipedia, it was split on a matter of orthography and given that we could not overcome the differences in the male and female form, we have asked the board of the WMF to allow for the Luxembourgian Wikipedia to be split in two.
Thanks,
GerardM
