I think this is a big misunderstanding on your part. The existance of a Wikipedia in a linguistic entity does not indicate any level of difference from other Wikipedias' languages. It does not claim that it is a "language" or a "dialect".
We have Wikipedias in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Serbo-Croatian. It's a bit of a paradox, if we have Wikipedias in the first 3, we shouldn't have one in the fourth logically.
But this problem is non-existant from a linguistic standpoint precisely for the reason I stated above. All four are linguistic entities, despite the fact that Serbo-Croatian is an "umbrella" entity that allows for the use of the other three. As long as there is a reason to have these Wikis separate (ie, unless BCS people can agree to a merger), they will be separate.
Now, I think everybody here knows by now that you would be willing to merge mo and ro Wikipedias with a script conversion system on ro.wikipedia. That is fine. Nobody here objects to such a system. What we do object to is that at this very moment, the proposal has very little support from the Romanian Wikipedian community. You have been told many times that you are welcome to try to test the waters, organize a poll at ro.wp, try to convince people of the utility and validity of such a system, but you keep complaining to this list about how it's not your responsibility and about how WE need to do something.
How can you have not figured out by now that with hundreds of e-mails repeating the exact same thing in so many words, you are not only failing to change anything, you are actually making people more and more firmly against the position you represent?
Mark
On 09/03/07, Liviu Andronic landronimirc@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Verbosity is a prerequisite for my arguments to be understood. Otherwise these are simply skipped.
.... Really ? ...
At times, this is the feeling that I have. At any rate, verbosity is necessary to make my arguments clear.
- According to the recently adopted Language proposal
policyhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP- that I suppose can be applied to existing wikipedias to determine their "validity" - there are three "essential" requisites that can be
verified: a
valid ISO-639 code, language singularity and a viable community and audience.
Hoi, You are plain wrong. You are also wrong in applying the policy in this way. The policy determines how new languages are to be accepted. The Moldovan Wikipedia already exists and it does have a valid ISO 639 code. Thanks, GerardM
Hello,
I have no intent to renew this debate. This is simply to say that my view over the entire issue has not radically changed. For the following (same) reasons:
From what I know, the tiny wikipedias (like the Moldovan one) were created à partir de a "list" with no formal voting and without following any specific guidelines or policy. On this basis, I believe that the newly adopted policy could be used for determining the "correctness" of wikipedias that were created in "obscure" ways. In any case, it is not up to me to decide such a usage.
As to the valid ISO 639 code.. It is valid indeed in the eyes of the ISO, but also according to the official POV of the Party of Communists in RM (I suspect), of the Transnistrian authorities and might have been in the eyes of the Soviet Authorities. [On a side note: I do not understand how you expect my arguments to be completely apolitical over an issue that is pure politics: considering Moldovan as a linguistic entity.]
However, scholarly research - Western included - disputes this. A lot of linguists
- if not most - do (with the notable exception of Vasile Stati; notable,
because he is the one). The regulating body of the "Moldovan language" - with regard to the Constitution - disputes this. Less important in the eyes of the WMF, natives dispute this (though still waiting for someone from Transnistria here). Please follow the links in my previous messages if you are not persuaded by this paragraph.
And, probably most important for the Board, the mo.wiki domain does not host content in a linguistic entity different from the Romanian one. It simply hosts transliterated Romanian content. I honestly believe that it is wrong for the Foundation to blindly follow the ISO specifications over this issue. It is also wrong for the Board to adopt - from the NPOV perspective, which should be respected even if certain flexibility is endorsed - a political POV over a linguistic/historical fact: at a given period, in a given region, Romanian was written with a different script.
Regards, Liviu _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l