I'd like to express that this Wikipedia has over 200 articles.
Also, as you will find on many websites, many rural peasants in
Moldova proper are literate only in Cyrillic. True, they are not
likely to have access to computers, but in the distant future they may
have use for a print edition (perhaps distributed for free or for very
cheap by a not-for-profit organisation).
I feel it should also be noted that it's not entirely accurate to say
that all Moldovans and Romanians have opposed this Wikipedia so far.
Dmitriid and Vertaler, two Moldovans living in Moldova, have supported
the existance of this Wikipedia.
So far, the only opposition has come from people living outside of
Moldova, although some of them are Moldovans in nationality. Most of
the opposition is still in Romania.
In the past, there was already a vote on the future of that Wikipedia,
and by a wide margin people voted to keep it.
Let me give a brief list of the supporters and opposers of this
Wikipedia and their national origin and current residence where they
are different.
Opposers:
1) Goie, Romania
2) Duca, Romania
3) Mihaitza, Romania
4) Alexandru, Romanian living in America
5) Landroni, Moldovan in France
6) Jeorjika, Moldovan living abroad (didn't specify country)
7) Oleg Alexandrov, Moldovan living in America
8) Anittas, Romanian living in America
Supporters:
1) Ronline, Romania
2) Dmitriid, Moldova
3) Vertaler, Moldova
4) Gabix, Belarus
5) myself
Now this is not an exhaustive list, rather, it is a list of the people
that I can remember have been part of this.
Also, I feel it's worth noting that:
Jeorjika, Duca, Goie, Landroni, and Mihaitza only very recently joined
to Wikipedia, the first four specifically because of the Moldovan WP.
Vertaler and Dmitriid too. Ronline, Gabix, myself, Oleg, Anittas, and
Alexandru are all previous users.
Mark
On 23/10/05, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg(a)math.ucla.edu> wrote:
I know that this issue has come up one or two times
this list
before, but from what I saw in the archives the discussion
attracted only a small audience, while the issue itself does not
show any signs of going way. I post this now hoping that there
will be a bigger discussion, hopefully followed by a resolution
of the matter.
The background of the issue and some comments on it are
available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Moldovan_W…
and more information is at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
In short,
http://mo.wikipedia.org/ is a version of Wikipedia
written in Romanian with Cyrillic characters. This combination is
used nowhere in the world except in Transnistria which is a
breakaway region of Republic of Moldova without international
recognition and with a rather dubious regime. It is a relic from
Soviet times, when in Republic of Moldova people used Cyrillic.
There are two views on this matter. Some people think that
nothing is wrong with having Wikipedia in all languages/character
sets possible. The number of potential readers and editors of
this particular version of Wikipedia is very small, but it still
could be useful. And deleting a language version of Wikipedia
would be against the Wiki spirit, would make Wikipedia
politicized, etc.
The other view is mostly reflected by people in Republic of
Moldova itself and neighboring Romania (again, we are talking
about the Romanian language here, the issue is the set of
characters - in Romania proper they use the Latin alphabet). To
us (I am from Republic of Moldova) writing our language in
Cyrillic is a symbol of what was wrong with the Soviet Union, a
totalitarian regime which did not give us even the choice of how
to write our own language, and of all the tragedies which
happened after Republic of Moldova was annexed to the Soviet
Union in 1940 and then again in 1945.
The discussion of this issue has been going on since June; see
again
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
Neither side of course has any power to do anything about it (an
administrator is not enough to close it down, for example). I
would like to again express my hope that this discussion will
attract a wide audience, and that the issue of existence of this
Wikipedia will eventually be settled.
Thank you,
Oleg Alexandrov
CAM assistant professor, UCLA
aoleg(a)math.ucla.edu
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