Re: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

Hello [..] but here we have a real problem and need a real solution, okay? Now that's good. This is definitively a more constructive approach than organizing carnivals. This "linguistic entity" term is still a mystery to me. There is no word about it on Wikipedia and Google doesn't say much (maybe someone has a pertinent link?). So that for the purpose of this email, I'll hold to my old-fashioned terminology. Before answering this, I hope that the Language Committee agrees on the following two points. First of all, the WMF does *not* want to have any content in the Moldovan dialect (Romanian as *spoken* in the historic region of Moldavia, which would currently comprise Eastern part of Romania and Moldova with Transnistria included). This would be completely stupid and trolls would be the only serious contributors. Secondly, the "Moldovan language" in its standard form is standard Romanian. You might look here<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language#Controversy>sy>, here<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closu… here<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closu… more information. "Even the loudest defender of the Moldovan language concept, Vasile Stati, has agreed<http://www.vremea.net/news/2005-01-13/18:45:35.html>that Moldovan and Romanian are identical in their literary forms". With these two points cleared out, the situation becomes less confusing. As said in my previous email, the current content on the Moldovan Wikipedia is standard Romanian written in Cyrillic, Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet (of course with stylistic and grammar faults, and bad transliterations). It is not reasonable to dedicate an entire Wikipedia section to this content, when the Romanian Wikipedia exists. The best solution would probably be installing a conversion script over the Romanian Wikipedia with, as Berto mentioned, a link on all pages "in Moldovan alphabet" or something similar (special attention should be paid to the name of this link, as there has to be a contrast between the Moldovan alphabet <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_alphabet> and the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Cyrillic_alphabet>; on a side note: personally, I would like a lot if a conversion script of Latin Romanian to Cyrillic Romanian were also created, but technically this would be more than a challenge). The good news is that there already is a partially functional conversion script <http://mcworld.org/McChirilic/?pagina=Limba_moldoveneasc%25C4%2583>(you may change "Limba_moldovenească" to any relevant article on ro.wiki). To my knowledge, it was created by Bogdan Giusca<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bogdangiusca>ca>, and as he says himself, "It's not yet perfect, but it can be improved". And it definitely needs improvements. It might get implemented in the way it is on the Serbian Wikipedia<http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-ec/%D0%91%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%80%D…82>, with Latin being the storage content and Cyrillic conversion performed on demand by clicking the link. Two reasons: nowadays Latin is, somewhat, the "standard" for the Romanian language and you've already seen how many people are willing to contribute in Cyrillic. Taking into consideration that the main objective here is for people still using this script to be able to access content in Cyrillic, this is acceptable. Now, I do not say that the Romanian Wikipedia would accept this. It is, however, a reasonable solution to this controversial issue. Romanian was historically written in three different scripts, so it would be logical to have *one* Wikipedia section dealing with all the three writing systems. I do not know the position of the Romanian Wikipedia admins, but I would suppose that they'd need to be persuaded in a similar way that I am trying to persuade the Language Committee. In any case, it would be better if someone more familiar with the Romanian Wikipedia shed more light on this point. > Now do me a favour, will you tell me how we can verify that the ro.wiki > admin structure will respect users and content coming from the cyr > interface? It's no provocation, it's a serious question, and I want a VERY > serious answer. I seriously doubt that such problems arise. Romanian speaking persons from Moldova are contributing to the Romanian Wikipedia for some time, already. And, to this day, I've never heard of flag-based conflicts. As long as content added is in line with NPOV and the rest of Wikipedia's principles, there should be no persecution. There is no hatred between Moldovans and Romanians. Frictions, yes. Maybe a bit of disrespect, randomly. But no hatred. From personal experience, I would say that Romanians are generally more friendly-intentioned towards Moldovans than the vice-verse. And they don't really care if you come from Transnistria or not. In the sense that in their eyes, Moldovans coming from the East of the Pruth river are their Romanian brothers. However, if you want to set some system of control (and there should be one, for the beginning at least), there'd be two ways. Either name one-two Moldovan nationals as Romanian Wikipedia admins (according to the rules, of course, that I personally am not familiar with) that would be empowered to intervene into relevant conflicts. Or simply - and probably better - empower some existing respectable Romanian Wikipedia admins, that - in case conflicts arise - will not act based on flag, but with respect to neutrality and a given situation. Furthermore, upon account creation, users could get informed on the admins dealing with different abuse problems. Regards, Liviu