Hi Caroline,

Indeed, I would characterise much of the activity as an "invasion" from the Romanian Wiki -- most of the voters are long-standing members of that Wiki, who call their language "Romanian", have lived most of their lives in Romania, and some of whom do not believe there should be a Moldovan Wikipedia at all.

However, all solutions which won in that vote, were also voted for by the Moldovan or two who voted, including the change of the Interwiki link name.

I personally don't have a problem with the interwiki title being changed, but is refreshing to me to see somebody who is finally actually interested in the "invasion" of mo.wiki.

Only one of the Romanians who voted, Ronline, has contributed more than a token amount to articles on the Moldovan Wikipedia. All the others have done is made a couple of edits to the article namespace (without adding any content, just wikification or in one case, correcting a date), most of their contributions are to talkpages where they have constantly criticised the Moldovan Wikipedia.

Throughout this conflict, I have been called various names by these people (excluding Ronline, who has been very polite) -- Stalinist, KGB agent, fag, terrorist, idiot, communist...

While some of those aren't apparently insults or perjoratives in most situations (fag, terrorist, and idiot being the exceptions), in this particular situation, they most certainly are.

Some of the Romanians continue to try to characterise the Moldovan Wikipedia as something that I want to work on alone, and that is mostly my work. This is certainly not true -- there are currently at least 3 contributors in Moldova, although only one of them is very active now: Vertaler, Dmitriid, and Gabix. The majority of the current content has been contributed by Gabix, or an anonymous user who I think is the same person as him.

I think the current solution is fine, but I do think that what happened there was pretty unfair -- should a group of en.wikipedians be allowed to go and start criticising the Scots Wikipedia on its talkpages, and then hold a vote a month later on whether or not it should be deleted?

Admittedly, Romanian and Moldovan in their written forms are much much closer than Scots and English (the main reason for a separate Wikipedia is that in the Pridniestran Moldovan Republic, Cyrillic is the official script for writing Moldovan, and in the Republic of Moldova, it is still widely used by peasants in rural areas, and some adults are more comfortable with it, especially the elderly), but I think the situation is comparable for other reasons: most Moldovans can read and write their language in Cyrillic, whether or not they do it on a daily basis, yet perhaps only one or two of the Romanians who "invaded" were any good at writing the language in Cyrillic.

I think the main problem is the fact that only one of these people made more than the most minimal of contributions.

Mark

On 22/08/05, Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk wrote:

This looks like the debate on whether Moldovan is a language or just Romanian.

There have been edit wars on the English Wikipedia on this very point. I think this needs careful investigation to make sure this wasn't an invasion from the Romanian wiki.

Caroline/Secretlodnon

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) Sent: 22 August 2005 09:55 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Change of Interwiki name for Moldovan language

Hi, I would like to know how it's possible to change the name of the interwiki link for the Moldovan language from the current "молдовеняс&#108 2;э" to "молдовеняс&#108 2;э (чириликэ)". I talked to Node and he said I should contact a developer, so if there are any developers reading this and you have some spare time, I would be very thankful if you could change it in this way for mo.wiki.

The reason behind the change is because such a change was specified in the Ronline proposal that was approved by the majority of Moldovan Wikipedia users for the future of the wiki.

See: http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere#en:Proposal

The explanation is: "Mo.wikipedia.org will be linked from other Wikipedias using the name "молдовеняс&#108 2;э (чириликэ)". This is to signify that the link is to a Moldovan (Cyrillic) page and that Moldovan is usually written in Latin script."

It was basically a compromise after a huge round of negotiations over at the Moldovan Wikipedia.

Thanks,

Ronline

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