Tell us about Luxembourgish Wikipedia

This page belongs to the project Tell us about your Wikipedia.

Luxembourgish Wikipedia

Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interpret. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have? - About a dozen, with departures and new arrivals.
Are your contributors mostly native speakers? - Yes.
Where do your contributors live (regions/country)? - Mostly in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, but about a quarter are native speakers currently living in other countries.
How common is it that your contributors meet in real life? - So far, there has been an annual get-together since the creation of lb:-wiki in 2004, in which about half of the regular contributors participate; some meet ocasionally more often.

Do you have special contacts with other Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)? - There are contacts, but mainly, if not exclusively, on technical questions.
Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones? - Occasionally from de:, fr:, en:, nl:, ... as it makes no sense to reinvent the wheel. Articles on more locally related topics naturally tend to be exclusively 'home-grown'.

Is there a Wikimedia chapter in your country? How does your language relate to it? - No.
Are there work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia? - Not to my knowledge.

Is there a language institution for your language, like an Academy, or a club of people interested in your language? Do you have contact with them? - There is the Permanent Council for the Luxembourgish Language and there are also several associations, institutions and people (academics, writers,...) interested in Luxembourgish. There are, however, no formal contacts so far, with lb:wiki.
Who (else) supports you? - /
What does the public outreach for your edition look like? Do you have flyers, give lectures, trainings etc.? - There have been a few reports/interviews in magazines, radio and tv programmes, and a presentation in a secondary school class, but the limited number of contributors makes it difficult to do "marketing" in addition to writing and/or maintenance.
Do you get feedback from readers? - Occasionally, on discussion pages and/or the Village pump, people leave comments. We also occasionally spot lb-wiki-"inspired" content used on radio or tv, e.g. in the introductions to various topics, showing that we are "read".
What other encyclopedias exist in your language? Is there a competition? - In 2006, a book called Luxemburger Lexikon, in German, on Lux.-related topics has been published, and in 2007 an anthology on writers from Luxembourg (in German, too). As they are books, they cannot be considered to be 'competitors' to freely available online content, rather the contrary could eventually be true one day.

Does your edition concentrate on certain topics, like your region and language, or Latin Wikipedia on Roman history and Christianity? - It has a "natural" tendency to be more extensive on Luxembourg-related topics than on others. The reason seems to be that, apart from the fact that our authors tend to know best about these topics, they often are published for the first time on the Internet, and therefore have a higher added-value for someone understanding the language than "general" topics, where shelves of books and pages over pages on the internet already exist in other languages such as en:, de: or fr:, and which are generally understood by lb:speakers.
Did your edition enjoy (?) text donations, for example from older encyclopedias? - No, 100 years ago written Lëtzebuergesch was even more rare, if not exotic, than it is today.

Is there a generally accepted norm about your language (spelling, dictionary, pronunciation)? - a) For spelling, there is. b) There is no official norm on "meaning" (legislation in Luxembourg is for historical reasons in French!), and there are plenty of borrowings from German or French, often used on personal preference. c) On pronunciation, there is no official norm either, as the law did not give a preference to any of the numerous existing dialects, but there is a tendency to a sort of 'standard' Lëtzebuergesch, used on radio and tv.
How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)? - Spelling is edited to comply with the standard spelling rules, we also expect writers to use 'standard', and no local dialects. If there are several possibilities to express the same concept ("Rot"-"Conseil", "Verfassung"-"Constitutioun", etc.), we use redirects in lemmata. Often, there is a discussion beforehand. We also have a specific page called lb:Wikipedia:Wéi heescht dat op Lëtzebuergesch? ("What do you say for ... in Luxembourgish?", where you can ask in case of doubts.

Is it allowed to write in other Moselle Franconian varieties? I'm specifically referring to those found in Lorraine and the Rhineland. Also, are there any plans to integrate other idioms like the Palatinate or the Alemannic Wikipedia have done where the lect a specific article is written in is indicated at the top of the page? --Son-of-my-comfort (talk) 19:22, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]