Thursday, April 07, 2011

www.wikipedia.org is not available for Wawa

The #URL for a #Wikipedia consists of an ISO-639 code followed by "wikipedia.org". Because of the configuration of the Wikipedia domain, "www" is not necessary in front of an URL.

The Wawa language of Cameroon has as its ISO-639 code "www" and, this poses a problem; when you type www.wikipedia.org, you go to the portal. A functional URL for Wawa would be www.www.wikipedia.org.

This is quite cumbersome and this has been recognised as one of those corner cases that pose a problem. As we have someone from SIL on the language committee, the request for a Wawa Wikipedia came to the attention of Melinda Lyon. She has now proposed to change the code for Wawa to "wwx".
Thanks,
     GerardM
at

2 comments:

  1. Wizardist11:02 pm

    Sure, you should make an exception for Wawa. In such cases, keeping up with ISO is dumb, say whatever.

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  2. Robin11:47 pm

    I also noticed Wawa, and I had sent a mail to SIL about this matter.

    And also, there is no request for a Wawa Wikipedia, but there is one for Wawa Wikisource:

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Wawa

    And who is Melinda Lyon? Is she someone from SIL?

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