Chronology was: User:Tsca added French municipalities into Polish
Wikipedia -> there is one guy on Serbian Wikipedia who is half Polish
half Serbian and he said to us about that -> I started with inserting
French municipalities -> BUT, we need transcription, so it is stopped
on Serbian Wikipedia until we find a way for transcription -> BUT, we
made some infrastructure for that and it can be useful for the project
Mass content adding.
So, I am calling Wikipedians from France to help on the French
municipalities issue. Please, look at the two articles:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding/Geographic_data/Places_a…
on Meta and http://crash.vikimedija.org/index.php/%D0%A4%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%86%D1%83%…
on Serbian testing wiki (in Serbian). And try to find a way to
participate in the project :)
Dag Gerard - je hebt gelijk.
I support Mark's positive advice to the promoters of the Tetum wiki, what he said seemed straightforward enough to me.
Once again, I repeat, we are talking about our newest independent nation, so it is only natural that they will eventually require (and most certainly get) a wiki in their official language, but they may need a bit of help and encouragement along the way.
pippu d'a
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:37:31 +0100
From: GerardM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Tetum language - reminder
To: wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org
Message-ID:
<41a006820603091537v15467cb1l1bdfbf43c6d094ab(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hoi,
For your information, formally Mark does not have authority. There are
few people who are seen to be authorortive. He is however one of the
people who knows a lot about what languages are. In this case the
=== message truncated ===
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Brion,
Can you please block (stop/freeze) the moldovan wikipedia and moldovan
wiktionary, after a link to the romanian version is simply put on the
moldovan main pages ?
Do not do a redirect from one to the other (so that the current content
at mo stays visible to anyone).
Do not delete the mo databases (<small>semi-private joke</small>)
Thanks
Ant
PS : if *anyone* feels like the moldovan project should be reopened
later on, for whatever reason, fine. But let's close it now.
REPS : can all current contributors to this topic on this mailing list
*freeze* and avoid sending any mails on the issue for ... say ... 24
hours ? Please ?
These are the necessary steps to delete the Moldovan Wikipedia:
1. "VALIDATION" and "ACCEPTING" by the Stewards, Bureaucrats of the votes made by the contributors on Moldovan Wikipedia.
(Voting was done legally on the following link: http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Alegeri)
(A CheckUser can be done in order to validate the votes of every contributor).
2. "Deletion of the Moldovan Wikipedia" as it was the only accepted solution proposed by the users.
According to the result of the referendum it was decided that this wikipedia must be deleted. It has to be respected the will and the result of this referendum. There is nothing more to say here.
---------------------------------
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This morning I went into BBC Television Centre and did a remote radio
interview for BBC Radio Wales 'Mousemat', which is to be run in this
Sunday's programme - 5pm Sunday, repeated 6pm Wednesday. If you're not
in Wales, you can pick it up on Sky TV channel 0117, or on the website
for a week after broadcast:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/shows/mousemat.shtml
I covered how Wikipedia works, how we keep it from turning to rubbish,
how good it is ("it's not perfect, and we're painfully aware of its
problems, but it's *pretty good*"), the millionth article (how you can
get so much good detail out of an unremarkable suburban railway
station) and I did a *big* push for Welsh speakers to get in on the
ground floor of cy.wikipedia - en. has 1,000,000 articles, but cy. has
4,000 and there's endless room to work on a really *good* Welsh
encyclopedia. The Welsh language is undergoing bit of a revival -
everyone there speaks English, but learn Welsh first, it's popular
with its ethnicity, it's something people feel they *should* know if
they're Welsh and of course kids learn it so their parents won't
understand them, and the parents learn to keep up with them ;-)
They recorded about 15 minutes, of which they'll probably use 5 or 6.
And I'm apparently to receive a small payment for my trouble. :-O Just
as well since I'm presently not on a contract. (Gi's a job!)
- d.
The Moldovan Wikipedia community has decided to close down the
Wikipedia.
A bit of background on this: Moldovan was the name given to the
standard Romanian language written with Cyrillic alphabet in the
Soviet Union.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the independent Republic of
Moldova kept this name for the language, although it asserted to
be the same language with Romanian and began to be written once
again with Latin script.
More on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language
As such, the "Moldovan language" got its own ISO code and a Wikipedia
was created for it, although practically it's the same language as
Romanian.
This Wikipedia remained empty with a redirect to Romanian Wikipedia on
the main page, until User:Node_ue was made admin and began writing
articles in Cyrillic alphabet.
About 95% of these articles were simply transliterations of articles
from Romanian Wikipedia, a part of the transliterations being done
manually by User:Russ, who can't speak Moldovan/Romanian and the
resulting articles were rather wrong.
A few articles were actually written by User:Node_ue, but they were
mostly stubs and rather badly written (with several grammatical
mistakes per sentence).
The translation of the interface used a large number of obscure
"pure Moldovan and not found in Romanian" words, which however,
were not known to actual Moldovans. (examples include
"bircieste" = "search" and "halaturi" = "tools")
The Voting
-----------
During the period of 12 January - 12 February, a local voting has been
organized to determine whether the community sees the need for the
existence of a Moldovan Wikipedia.
The vote was opened to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian
editors. While many of the side discussions were held in English
and Russian (in addition to Moldovan/Romanian), the vote was
restrained to determine the will of actual and potential editors.
Some votes were rejected on this basis.
Romanian editors were accepted to vote for two reasons:
* 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
translation is necessary) from the Romanian wikipedia. In the oppinion
of the moldovan organizers of the referendum, this gives Romanians a
right to express their vote.
* Romanian and Moldovan are the same language for all day-to-day
purposes (cf. [[:en:Moldovan language]]), which makes them potential
editors.
Two votes were rejected because they were from people who did not
speak Romanian/Moldovan and didn't had enough contributions to
either wikipedia.
There are several strong reasons that compelled us to request the
deletion of the Moldovan language Wikipedia. Among them technical,
originality, and ethical arguments that we briefly expose here.
History
-------
It was created by Node_ue, who was the first admin.
Its deletion has already been discussed. Consensus not reached, for
the intentions of Node_ue, and the reaction of Moldovan editors was
not clear at the time. At that time, it was already clear that a
Latin-script Moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist (so that even
Node_ue agreed to point the latin version to the Romanian wikipedia).
It appeared that his only concern is to maintain the cyrillic version
of the moldovan wikipedia, which uses the Sovied-imposed script.
Following several abusive administration incidents, the adminship has
been removed from Node_ue.
==Deletion referendum==
Was held between between 12 January and 12 February and it was opened
to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian editors. Romanian
editors were accepted here for two reasons:
- 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
translation is necessary). In the oppinion of the moldovan organizers
of the referendum, this gives Romanians a right to express their vote.
- Romanian and Moldovan are arguably the same language for all
day-to-day purposes.
The result of the referendum is the following:
* No Moldovan editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.
* No Romanian editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.
* Only two editors have abstained, showing that the overwhelming
majority of the users find the existence of the moldovan wikipedia
offensive.
By Moldovan editor we understand here an editor that is able to
contribute originally in the language.
Conclusion
------------
In conclusion, we, the Moldovan and Romanian wikipedia editors,
believe that the current moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist
for:
- it has no editor fluent in Moldovan
- it brings no information
- it is considered offensive by many Moldovans and Romanians.
Voting results
--------------
The following people voted for the closing of the Wikipedia:
Moldova
----------
#[[User:Pavel|Pavel]]
#[[User:Furculita|Furculita]]
#[[User:AndersoN|AndersoN]]
#[[User:Landroni|Landroni]]
#[[User:Argos|Argos]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:TSO1D|TSO1D]]
Romania
---------
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Out_slide|Out_slide]]
#[[User:Bogdan|Bogdan]]
#[[User:Romihaitza|Romihaitza]]
#[[User:AdiJapan|AdiJapan]]
#[[User:Dpotop]]/[[:ro:Utilizator:Dpotop]]
#[[User:Ditae|Ditae]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Vlad|Vlad]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Orioane]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Leinarius]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Wars]]
#[[Utilizator:Dacodava|Dacodava]]
#[[User:Vasile|Vasile]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:MobyDick]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Arado]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Waelsch]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:olario]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Bunu vio]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:SCriBu]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Emily]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:R.S.]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Constantzeanu]]
#[[User:Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?|Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?]]
#[[User:Cosco|Cosco]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:AnaZ|AnaZ]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Dumiac|Dumiac]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Evosphere]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Laurap]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:KlaudiuMihaila]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Strainu]]
With these results, a clear consensus has been reached in the group
of those who speak Romanian/Moldovan language.
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Alegeri
It seems that I need to justify my participation in this discussion.
I have two arguments for it:
1. Fluency in Moldovan. By any linguistic standards I speak the Moldovan
dialect of Romanian (with the accent). And I do it correctly. This fact alone
should allow me to participate in the vote and discussions. I can even read and write using cyrillic script. Correctly. :)
2. I have relatives in the Republic of Moldova, and I know what they have
no linguistic identity problems. Just take a look in the list of Moldovan
editors: regardless of official politics (aimed at preserving good relations
with Russia), not one is for a moldovan wikipedia.
3. My participation into this discussion was subject to one strong rule: I have never entered in conflict with a Moldovan editor, for I believe they have the moral authority to do what they want with mo.wiki. What I have done was in line with their requirements.
Yours, [[:en:Dpotop]]
---------------------------------
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Sorry for not replying to Mark's emails, but I think that discussing
politics and whether Romanian or French has a grammar closer to Latin
is off-topic on this list. :-)
Node, please do not accuse people for sockpuppetry without any
evidence: when Pavel was on #wikipedia, he had an IP address of
a .md ISP and since Freenode does not allow proxies, he really
must be in Moldova.
Also, we should not confuse this Romanian/Moldovan situation
with other situations where it's the debate whether a dialect/close
language should have a Wikipedia, like Scots/English or Serbian/Croat.
Nowadays, the dispute that "Moldovan" is different from "Romanian"
is absurd: even Voronin, the Moldovan president said that they're the
same language and just the name is different.
I am the open source editor at Wiley Publishing and I am interested in
publishing a beginning level book on wikis that would focus on the tools,
techniques and best practices in building, rolling-out and administering a
wiki. In keeping with the topic, I am looking for suggestions from the
community with regard to topics and technologies that should be covered. I
am also looking for potential author candidates. If you would be
interested in contributing to this project, please email me at
kkemper(a)wiley.com and I will provide you with more details. The project
is very much in the early stages, but chances are that it will go into our
Wrox Beginning series www.wrox.com.
Thanks,
Kit Kemper
Acquisitions Editor
Wiley Publishing, Inc.