Hello, it appears that the discussion on the moldovan wikipedia just stopped, without a decision being reached. Don't mean to bother you, but we came here for a solution to this problem. :)
Yours, Dpotop
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Problem? Look at the recent changes on mo.wiki. You and your band of thugs have not been caring about that place since you left a week or two ago. You just noticed it's still there, oh, let's go complain.
The fact is, none of you actually visits there very often.
Mark
On 18/03/06, Jacky PB dpotop1@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello, it appears that the discussion on the moldovan wikipedia just stopped, without a decision being reached. Don't mean to bother you, but we came here for a solution to this problem. :)
Yours, Dpotop
Yahoo! Mail Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail makes sharing a breeze. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
Mark Williamson wrote:
Problem? Look at the recent changes on mo.wiki. You and your band of thugs have not been caring about that place since you left a week or two ago. You just noticed it's still there, oh, let's go complain.
The fact is, none of you actually visits there very often.
AFAICT, it was a POV fork of the Romanian Wikipedia (in Cyrillic), and you were the only person adding anything to it. The fact is, Moldovan is a relic of the Cold War, and the only people who still officially use it are the unrecognized republic of Transnistria.[1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabet#Moldovan
On 3/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Problem? Look at the recent changes on mo.wiki. You and your band of thugs have not been caring about that place since you left a week or two ago. You just noticed it's still there, oh, let's go complain.
The fact is, none of you actually visits there very often.
AFAICT, it was a POV fork of the Romanian Wikipedia (in Cyrillic), and you were the only person adding anything to it. The fact is, Moldovan is a relic of the Cold War, and the only people who still officially use it are the unrecognized republic of Transnistria.[1]
Hoi, Please read what you write; '''people''' who still use it.. Of all the lame arguments that I have heard this is a great one. May I remind you of what the Wikimedia Foundation stands for? Information to all people in their language... Therefore if you want an argument to keep this project you just provided it. Thanks, GerardM
Gerard,
Thank you for this message. It summarises my view of this project almost exactly.
Besides that, though, Alphax is a bit incorrect as far as a couple of things go:
1) It was never a "POV fork". The only significant difference is script. It's not as if pages are copied but their contents are replaced with POV, rather, their contents are usually simply converted to Cyrillic.
2) Moldovan is not a relic of the cold war. Nearly half of the people who speak Romanian or Moldovan in Moldova claim to speak "Moldovan" nowadays. If you mean the Cyrillic script is a relic of the Cold War, that's not exactly accurate, Latin was made official in 1989, and a period of transition and confusion took place until about 1993~1995, by which time nearly all citizens knew Latin, whether they liked it or not. This isn't nessecarily the case in Transnistria, where, as Gerard noted, "people use it".
Mark
On 18/03/06, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Problem? Look at the recent changes on mo.wiki. You and your band of thugs have not been caring about that place since you left a week or two ago. You just noticed it's still there, oh, let's go complain.
The fact is, none of you actually visits there very often.
AFAICT, it was a POV fork of the Romanian Wikipedia (in Cyrillic), and you were the only person adding anything to it. The fact is, Moldovan is a relic of the Cold War, and the only people who still officially use it are the unrecognized republic of Transnistria.[1]
Hoi, Please read what you write; '''people''' who still use it.. Of all the lame arguments that I have heard this is a great one. May I remind you of what the Wikimedia Foundation stands for? Information to all people in their language... Therefore if you want an argument to keep this project you just provided it. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
If you mean the Cyrillic script is a relic of the Cold War, that's not exactly accurate, Latin was made official in 1989, and a period of transition and confusion took place until about 1993~1995, by which time nearly all citizens knew Latin, whether they liked it or not. This isn't nessecarily the case in Transnistria, where, as Gerard noted, "people use it".
Mark
Even though this in itself is not a particularly good reason against closing down the Moldovan Wikipedia, the Cyrillic script for Moldovan is very much a relic of the Cold War. This can be seen by the fact that Latin was introduced in Moldova right after the Cold War. Transnistria itself can be seen as relic of the Cold War - it's government still glorifies the symbols of the USSR and Communism.
But, anyway, it's been agreed (see Anthere's message) that the Moldovan Wikipedia should be frozen for any editing.
Ronline
Well, it's not frozen. An anonymous IP (I suspect it's Mark, a.k.a. User:Node_ue) and the belarussian Gabix are creating loads of two-line pages to prove that there is activity there. Again, a political stunt, like those that made me write against this wikipedia after checking that Moldovans themselves are against it (or at best neutral, but never supporting or editing).
Cheers, Dpotop
"Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)" rowikipedia@gmail.com wrote: >
If you mean the Cyrillic script is a relic of the Cold War, that's not exactly accurate, Latin was made official in 1989, and a period of transition and confusion took place until about 1993~1995, by which time nearly all citizens knew Latin, whether they liked it or not. This isn't nessecarily the case in Transnistria, where, as Gerard noted, "people use it".
Mark
Even though this in itself is not a particularly good reason against closing down the Moldovan Wikipedia, the Cyrillic script for Moldovan is very much a relic of the Cold War. This can be seen by the fact that Latin was introduced in Moldova right after the Cold War. Transnistria itself can be seen as relic of the Cold War - it's government still glorifies the symbols of the USSR and Communism.
But, anyway, it's been agreed (see Anthere's message) that the Moldovan Wikipedia should be frozen for any editing.
Ronline _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Hoi, The arguments that you use to deny people who use the cyrillic script is political. By continuing this line of arguments you make your POV case worse. What does it matter that Transnistria can be seen as a relic of the cold war, what does Transnistria matter that its government glorifies USSR and communism. Wikipedia is for people.
The continued insistance of this blatantly political POV makes me consider that you the people in Transnistria are discrimated against. They are denied their place under the sun. A place under the sun that does not cost us much .. hard disks are cheap.
With this continued agressive insistence of the deletion of this Wikipedia, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that it is wrong for the Wikimedia Foundation to close down this project. The reason: the arguments used are plain discrimation. It is discrimination because of ideological and political reasons.
Thanks, GerardM
On 3/18/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) rowikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
If you mean the Cyrillic script is a relic of the Cold War, that's not exactly accurate, Latin was made official in 1989, and a period of transition and confusion took place until about 1993~1995, by which time nearly all citizens knew Latin, whether they liked it or not. This isn't nessecarily the case in Transnistria, where, as Gerard noted, "people use it".
Mark
Even though this in itself is not a particularly good reason against closing down the Moldovan Wikipedia, the Cyrillic script for Moldovan is very much a relic of the Cold War. This can be seen by the fact that Latin was introduced in Moldova right after the Cold War. Transnistria itself can be seen as relic of the Cold War - it's government still glorifies the symbols of the USSR and Communism.
But, anyway, it's been agreed (see Anthere's message) that the Moldovan Wikipedia should be frozen for any editing.
Ronline _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Also, perhaps it should be noted that on the voting page, Dpotop wrote at the very top that the Foundation has limited resources. A good way to encourage people to vote his way...
Mark
On 18/03/06, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The arguments that you use to deny people who use the cyrillic script is political. By continuing this line of arguments you make your POV case worse. What does it matter that Transnistria can be seen as a relic of the cold war, what does Transnistria matter that its government glorifies USSR and communism. Wikipedia is for people.
The continued insistance of this blatantly political POV makes me consider that you the people in Transnistria are discrimated against. They are denied their place under the sun. A place under the sun that does not cost us much .. hard disks are cheap.
With this continued agressive insistence of the deletion of this Wikipedia, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that it is wrong for the Wikimedia Foundation to close down this project. The reason: the arguments used are plain discrimation. It is discrimination because of ideological and political reasons.
Thanks, GerardM
On 3/18/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) rowikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
If you mean the Cyrillic script is a relic of the Cold War, that's not exactly accurate, Latin was made official in 1989, and a period of transition and confusion took place until about 1993~1995, by which time nearly all citizens knew Latin, whether they liked it or not. This isn't nessecarily the case in Transnistria, where, as Gerard noted, "people use it".
Mark
Even though this in itself is not a particularly good reason against closing down the Moldovan Wikipedia, the Cyrillic script for Moldovan is very much a relic of the Cold War. This can be seen by the fact that Latin was introduced in Moldova right after the Cold War. Transnistria itself can be seen as relic of the Cold War - it's government still glorifies the symbols of the USSR and Communism.
But, anyway, it's been agreed (see Anthere's message) that the Moldovan Wikipedia should be frozen for any editing.
Ronline _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, The arguments that you use to deny people who use the cyrillic script is political. By continuing this line of arguments you make your POV case worse. What does it matter that Transnistria can be seen as a relic of the cold war, what does Transnistria matter that its government glorifies USSR and communism. Wikipedia is for people.
The continued insistance of this blatantly political POV makes me consider that you the people in Transnistria are discrimated against. They are denied their place under the sun. A place under the sun that does not cost us much .. hard disks are cheap.
With this continued agressive insistence of the deletion of this Wikipedia, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that it is wrong for the Wikimedia Foundation to close down this project. The reason: the arguments used are plain discrimation. It is discrimination because of ideological and political reasons.
Its very existence is a POV fork - it's a language which nobody offically recognises as being distinct from Romanian (I say lift, you say elevator), for a country which nobody offically recognises as existing. If the Foundation says yes, a country which doesn't exist is allowed to have projects in a language which doesn't exist, they are promoting the POV that the country and it's language exist and should be recognised. /That/ is not a goal of the Foundation.
That's a rather inaccurate assessment. The official language of the Republic of Moldova, which is recognised by every nation on earth, is "Moldovan".
Also, whether or not Transnistria is internationally recognised as an independent country, it's certainly undeniable that there is some usage of the Cyrillic script over there.
And if having mowp is a statement by WMF to the legitimacy of Transnistria, isn't *not* having it equally POV in the opposite direction? Note that I don't personally think it's POV.
Mark
On 18/03/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, The arguments that you use to deny people who use the cyrillic script is political. By continuing this line of arguments you make your POV case worse. What does it matter that Transnistria can be seen as a relic of the cold war, what does Transnistria matter that its government glorifies USSR and communism. Wikipedia is for people.
The continued insistance of this blatantly political POV makes me consider that you the people in Transnistria are discrimated against. They are denied their place under the sun. A place under the sun that does not cost us much .. hard disks are cheap.
With this continued agressive insistence of the deletion of this Wikipedia, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that it is wrong for the Wikimedia Foundation to close down this project. The reason: the arguments used are plain discrimation. It is discrimination because of ideological and political reasons.
Its very existence is a POV fork - it's a language which nobody offically recognises as being distinct from Romanian (I say lift, you say elevator), for a country which nobody offically recognises as existing. If the Foundation says yes, a country which doesn't exist is allowed to have projects in a language which doesn't exist, they are promoting the POV that the country and it's language exist and should be recognised. /That/ is not a goal of the Foundation.
-- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
Mark Williamson wrote:
On 18/03/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
Its very existence is a POV fork - it's a language which nobody offically recognises as being distinct from Romanian (I say lift, you say elevator), for a country which nobody offically recognises as existing. If the Foundation says yes, a country which doesn't exist is allowed to have projects in a language which doesn't exist, they are promoting the POV that the country and it's language exist and should be recognised. /That/ is not a goal of the Foundation.
That's a rather inaccurate assessment. The official language of the Republic of Moldova, which is recognised by every nation on earth, is "Moldovan".
Ok, so how is it different to Romanian? According to [1] Moldovan "is essentially the same as Romanian". Let's call a spade a spade, mmkay?
Also, whether or not Transnistria is internationally recognised as an independent country, it's certainly undeniable that there is some usage of the Cyrillic script over there.
Sure, but as Bogdan Giusca wrote:
NO MOLDOVANS requested or wanted this Wikipedia.
We have *no* Transnistrian Moldovan contributors who want to write a wikipedia in Cyrillic alphabet.
Its only supporters are Node_ue (the kid in Arizona who barely speaks the language) and a few Russians who support it for ideological/political reasons and who can't contribute anyway, as they don't know the language.
There are no newspapers, no journals, no magazines, no books currently published in Romanian Cyrillic in Transnistria. The children use decades old schoolbooks from the time of the Soviet Union.
Virtually everyone there would like to switch the education system to the Latin alphabet, but dissent is not something easy to do in a totalitarian regime: there are some Romanian/Moldovan Transnistrians in prison since 1991 for political dissent.
So, they are obviously not doing it by choice, and none of them were contributing anyway.
And if having mowp is a statement by WMF to the legitimacy of Transnistria, isn't *not* having it equally POV in the opposite direction? Note that I don't personally think it's POV.
No. NPOV says that we have to include all *majority* viewpoints, not *all* viewpoints. Including all viewpoints is /balanced/, but inclusion of a POV which is not in the majority (recogninsing the unrecognised language of an unrecognised nation) is itself POV. If the UN recognises Trasnistria overnight, and they declare that their offical language is Moldovan written in Cyrillic script, and Transnistrians start to ask for a Wikipedia in Moldovan-Cyrillic, they can have it. But not before.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Moldova#Language
That's a rather inaccurate assessment. The official language of the Republic of Moldova, which is recognised by every nation on earth, is "Moldovan".
Ok, so how is it different to Romanian? According to [1] Moldovan "is essentially the same as Romanian". Let's call a spade a spade, mmkay?
And if you look at the detailed history of [1], it's one of many pages where a small number of Romanian trolls made so much racket that they scared everybody else off. None of the major pages about Moldova are very good -- they are all written mostly by Romanians. Attempts of Moldovans or others to make them more neutral and accurate are constantly reverted, and the people who try to make things good are insulted and harassed until they leave.
None of these people really care about Moldova other than as a topic of nationalist sentiment, though -- none of them has ever really contributed to the articles about places in Moldova, people in Moldova, and things like that -- mostly just pages like [[Moldova]], [[Moldovan culture]], [[Moldovan language]], etc.
If we had such poor function in articles related to Bosnia, IE, that they were dominated by Serbian ultranationalist trolls, they would very likely say "Bosnian is essentially the same as Serbian" -- there *are* relatively few differences, many of them are artificial, etc.
That aside, the topic at hand isn't really whether or not we should have a "Moldovan Wikipedia" so much as it is whether or not we should host content in Cyrillic.
Sure, but as Bogdan Giusca wrote:
NO MOLDOVANS requested or wanted this Wikipedia.
We have *no* Transnistrian Moldovan contributors who want to write a wikipedia in Cyrillic alphabet.
Its only supporters are Node_ue (the kid in Arizona who barely speaks the language) and a few Russians who support it for ideological/political reasons and who can't contribute anyway, as they don't know the language.
There are no newspapers, no journals, no magazines, no books currently published in Romanian Cyrillic in Transnistria. The children use decades old schoolbooks from the time of the Soviet Union.
Virtually everyone there would like to switch the education system to the Latin alphabet, but dissent is not something easy to do in a totalitarian regime: there are some Romanian/Moldovan Transnistrians in prison since 1991 for political dissent.
So, they are obviously not doing it by choice, and none of them were contributing anyway.
Since, of course, the word of Bogdan Giushca is the word of God!
And if having mowp is a statement by WMF to the legitimacy of Transnistria, isn't *not* having it equally POV in the opposite direction? Note that I don't personally think it's POV.
No. NPOV says that we have to include all *majority* viewpoints, not *all* viewpoints. Including all viewpoints is /balanced/, but inclusion of a POV which is not in the majority (recogninsing the unrecognised language of an unrecognised nation) is itself POV. If the UN recognises Trasnistria overnight, and they declare that their offical language is Moldovan written in Cyrillic script, and Transnistrians start to ask for a Wikipedia in Moldovan-Cyrillic, they can have it. But not before.
So, is it POV that we have a Wikipedia in Corsican despite the fact that there is no nation of Corsica recognised by the UN and that Corsican is not the official language of any country?? No. What matters is that PEOPLE USE IT. for their primary language
Mark
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
By the way, similarly to how Romanians like to equate Arizona with me, and thus anybody from Arizona must be me, perhaps we should do the same with Moldova? After all, Moldova's population is smaller by quite a bit, and internet access is less widespread in Moldova.
So all those Moldovans who voted (all whopping 7 of them!!) are obviously just one person. Right, Bogdan?
Mark
On 19/03/06, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
That's a rather inaccurate assessment. The official language of the Republic of Moldova, which is recognised by every nation on earth, is "Moldovan".
Ok, so how is it different to Romanian? According to [1] Moldovan "is essentially the same as Romanian". Let's call a spade a spade, mmkay?
And if you look at the detailed history of [1], it's one of many pages where a small number of Romanian trolls made so much racket that they scared everybody else off. None of the major pages about Moldova are very good -- they are all written mostly by Romanians. Attempts of Moldovans or others to make them more neutral and accurate are constantly reverted, and the people who try to make things good are insulted and harassed until they leave.
None of these people really care about Moldova other than as a topic of nationalist sentiment, though -- none of them has ever really contributed to the articles about places in Moldova, people in Moldova, and things like that -- mostly just pages like [[Moldova]], [[Moldovan culture]], [[Moldovan language]], etc.
If we had such poor function in articles related to Bosnia, IE, that they were dominated by Serbian ultranationalist trolls, they would very likely say "Bosnian is essentially the same as Serbian" -- there *are* relatively few differences, many of them are artificial, etc.
That aside, the topic at hand isn't really whether or not we should have a "Moldovan Wikipedia" so much as it is whether or not we should host content in Cyrillic.
Sure, but as Bogdan Giusca wrote:
NO MOLDOVANS requested or wanted this Wikipedia.
We have *no* Transnistrian Moldovan contributors who want to write a wikipedia in Cyrillic alphabet.
Its only supporters are Node_ue (the kid in Arizona who barely speaks the language) and a few Russians who support it for ideological/political reasons and who can't contribute anyway, as they don't know the language.
There are no newspapers, no journals, no magazines, no books currently published in Romanian Cyrillic in Transnistria. The children use decades old schoolbooks from the time of the Soviet Union.
Virtually everyone there would like to switch the education system to the Latin alphabet, but dissent is not something easy to do in a totalitarian regime: there are some Romanian/Moldovan Transnistrians in prison since 1991 for political dissent.
So, they are obviously not doing it by choice, and none of them were contributing anyway.
Since, of course, the word of Bogdan Giushca is the word of God!
And if having mowp is a statement by WMF to the legitimacy of Transnistria, isn't *not* having it equally POV in the opposite direction? Note that I don't personally think it's POV.
No. NPOV says that we have to include all *majority* viewpoints, not *all* viewpoints. Including all viewpoints is /balanced/, but inclusion of a POV which is not in the majority (recogninsing the unrecognised language of an unrecognised nation) is itself POV. If the UN recognises Trasnistria overnight, and they declare that their offical language is Moldovan written in Cyrillic script, and Transnistrians start to ask for a Wikipedia in Moldovan-Cyrillic, they can have it. But not before.
So, is it POV that we have a Wikipedia in Corsican despite the fact that there is no nation of Corsica recognised by the UN and that Corsican is not the official language of any country?? No. What matters is that PEOPLE USE IT. for their primary language
Mark
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
On Mar 19, 2006, at 2:04 AM, Mark Williamson wrote:
By the way, similarly to how Romanians like to equate Arizona with me, and thus anybody from Arizona must be me, perhaps we should do the same with Moldova? After all, Moldova's population is smaller by quite a bit, and internet access is less widespread in Moldova.
Cool! I'm from Romania!
Anyways, I'm a libertarian-socialist-american, and I generally take the view that if person a thinks person b is being "oppressive" by expressing themselves, the problem in that case is person a, not person b.
Why not have a wikipedia written in, say, cyrillic, using phonetics, to describe ami articles? If nothing else, people who are used to cyrillic letters can learn to speak the language. Intentionally *supressing* the use of cryllic, latin, or any other character set to write articles in a wikipedia space is the problem, not whether or not people are speaking english, but using cherokee (or whatever) letters.
So, some folks got suppressed, and were forced to use one group of characters, so they are now arguing about forcing the use of another group of characters? How enlightened of them. *sigh*
-Bop -- Ronin Professional Consulting LLC 4245 NE Alberta Ct. Portland, OR 97218 678-492-1046/503-282-1370
2006/3/19, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
If we had such poor function in articles related to Bosnia, IE, that they were dominated by Serbian ultranationalist trolls, they would very likely say "Bosnian is essentially the same as Serbian" -- there *are* relatively few differences, many of them are artificial, etc.
I think this links in to what I believe is the source of a lot of the confusion related to Moldova(n) - the fact that the relationship between Moldova and Romania is unique in the world, and there is no comparable case. The Bosnia-Serbia case is different - Bosniaks are undoubtedly a separate nation from Serbs, whereas Moldovans are still engaging in the process of nation-building (or maybe moving away from it... the problem is that even in the current confusion over nationality, the country is being pulled both ways, one way towards a Romanian national identity, the other way towards a separate Moldovan identity). So, this is why a lot of Romanians feel they have authority to write about Moldovan subjects, because they consider Moldovans to be the same nation as them.
Mark, of course, believes, from what I know, that there really is no Romanian nationality, that the present "Romanian" ethnicity is really Wallachian, and that Moldovans are hence different to Wallachians/Romanians, and hence any form of Romanian intervention into Moldovan affairs is (Wallachian) irredentism (consider, however, that current Wallachia is just one of three regions of modern Romania, and is neither the most prosperous nor the most significantly over-represented region in Romanian culture and politics).
I think a similar situation to Moldova is that of Kosovo. That is, Kosovo is to Albania as Moldova is to Romania, in many ways. Many people in Kosovo would consider themselves Kosovars about 15 years after independence (or maybe even now). Also, Just imagine for a second that during Yugoslav times, the Kosovars had been taught that their language was called "Kosovar" and made to write it using Cyrillic letters. That's sort of the situation we have in Moldova now.
Ronline
Hoi, Every relation is unique. There may be similarities but they are differences at the same time. What you call Romanian is about people / country what we are doing in the WMF is about language.
When there are some people that like to read Moldovan, there is no reason why we should discriminate against them. The political relevance it has, it has only because you making it relevant. The fact that many people say the same thing does not mean that they are right. The fact that politicans say things does not mean it is true.
On a larger scale, should it really matter what you or Mark believe about nationality and ethnicity. What matters is that we allow the other to have his or her POV. The main thing relevant is this POV in the way of writing NPOV articles. If you argue that it cannot be NPOV because of the language used, the argument would be a two-sided affair and it would make everything you have written suspect as well.
I am interested in words, in lexicology. Having words that are used or have been used makes sense. When Moldovan literature exists, there is the possibility to get enough words in a digital way so that we can do things. We could build spellcheckers for instance. Where you would argue that nobody wants to write Moldovan, I would argue that Moldovan has been written and therefore there is enough that can be OCR'd and spellchecked. There is enough to want to collect Moldovan words and find the words that have a different meaning in that context.
In the Netherlands there was this period where the protestants destroyed religious imagery because of reasons of religion. Roman statues in the Vatican have missing genitalia because of the insistence of prudety. The attitude of denial of others is what destroys a heritage that may be thought important in 100 years time.
Thanks, GerardM
On 3/19/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) rowikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
2006/3/19, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
If we had such poor function in articles related to Bosnia, IE, that they were dominated by Serbian ultranationalist trolls, they would very likely say "Bosnian is essentially the same as Serbian" -- there *are* relatively few differences, many of them are artificial, etc.
I think this links in to what I believe is the source of a lot of the confusion related to Moldova(n) - the fact that the relationship between Moldova and Romania is unique in the world, and there is no comparable case. The Bosnia-Serbia case is different - Bosniaks are undoubtedly a separate nation from Serbs, whereas Moldovans are still engaging in the process of nation-building (or maybe moving away from it... the problem is that even in the current confusion over nationality, the country is being pulled both ways, one way towards a Romanian national identity, the other way towards a separate Moldovan identity). So, this is why a lot of Romanians feel they have authority to write about Moldovan subjects, because they consider Moldovans to be the same nation as them.
Mark, of course, believes, from what I know, that there really is no Romanian nationality, that the present "Romanian" ethnicity is really Wallachian, and that Moldovans are hence different to Wallachians/Romanians, and hence any form of Romanian intervention into Moldovan affairs is (Wallachian) irredentism (consider, however, that current Wallachia is just one of three regions of modern Romania, and is neither the most prosperous nor the most significantly over-represented region in Romanian culture and politics).
I think a similar situation to Moldova is that of Kosovo. That is, Kosovo is to Albania as Moldova is to Romania, in many ways. Many people in Kosovo would consider themselves Kosovars about 15 years after independence (or maybe even now). Also, Just imagine for a second that during Yugoslav times, the Kosovars had been taught that their language was called "Kosovar" and made to write it using Cyrillic letters. That's sort of the situation we have in Moldova now.
Ronline _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
GerardM wrote:
On 3/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Problem? Look at the recent changes on mo.wiki. You and your band of thugs have not been caring about that place since you left a week or two ago. You just noticed it's still there, oh, let's go complain.
The fact is, none of you actually visits there very often.
AFAICT, it was a POV fork of the Romanian Wikipedia (in Cyrillic), and you were the only person adding anything to it. The fact is, Moldovan is a relic of the Cold War, and the only people who still officially use it are the unrecognized republic of Transnistria.[1]
Hoi, Please read what you write; '''people''' who still use it.. Of all the lame arguments that I have heard this is a great one. May I remind you of what the Wikimedia Foundation stands for? Information to all people in their language... Therefore if you want an argument to keep this project you just provided it.
So, you're in favour of American English split from Commonwealth English then? After all, the American people have their own language...
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